









4 












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SUnsCRIPTION PRICE, $6.00 PER VEAR. May 5, 1892. 

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BY 


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J. M. BiRiiSE , ' 

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AUTHOR OP “my lady N1C<‘' iNE, ' ' L I •: .!U L ' ETC. 


NEW YORK 

i. PUBLISHING COMPANY 

104 & 106 FOURTH AVENUE 


Entered at the Post Otlice, New Y oik.^^Y^a6^ -'ud Class Matter, May 1 1 , 1888. 



RECENTLY PUBLISHED. 





J. M. BARRIE’S WORKS. 

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT WITH THE AUTHOR. 


MY LADY NICOTINE. 

A STUDY IN SMOKE. 

By J. M. Barrie. i2mo, gilt top, extra cloth, $1.50. 

Paper, 25 Cents. 

This is the most delightful of all the books that have been written 
on the subject of pipes and tobacco. 

“ Humor refined, irresistible, characteristic.” — London Echo. 

” There is much of pipes, cigars, and tobacco ; but there is more of bright chat, 
humorous observation, witty comment, good-natured satire .... the whole pro- 
viding excellent and entertaining reading.” — Boston Sattirday Evening Gazette. 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


By J. M. Barrie. i2mo, gilt top, extra cloth, $1.50. 

Paper, 25 Cents. 

‘‘ We follow the homely record with an interest which the most sensational drama 
could not surpass.” — Mrs. Oliphant, in Blackwood's Magazine. 

“ No one who loves what is loveliest can afford to leave it unread. It is full of 
the divinest pathos, the brightest humor, the subtlest perception of all the highest 
qiualities of literary art.” — Louise Chandler Moulton, in Boston Herald. 


AULD LICHT 'iDYLLS'. 


By J. M. ilil^RRiE. i2mo, gilt top, extra cloth, $1.50. 

“With wonderful breadth'^cstf delineation, the author knows how to combine the 
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“ As word pictures, really wonderfuL.i^6’ciJi'/fj^ Leader. 



CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

104 & 106 Fourth Avenue, New York'. 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


i; M; BARRIE. 

ll 


NEW YORK 

CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 

104 & 106 Fourth Avenue 


.\52.n’] 

Wl 

3(it 


THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS^ 
RAHWAY, N. J. 


SOURCE UNKNOWN . 


JOL 8 0 1943 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I. 

rACB 

THE HOUSE ON THE BRAE I 

CHAPTER II. 

ON THE TRACK OF THE MINISTER ... ... lO 

CHAPTER III. 

PREPARING TO RECEIVE COMPANY ... ... 19 

CHAPTER IV. 

WAITING FOR THE DOCTOR 26 

CPIAPTER V. 

A HUMORIST ON HIS CALLING 36 

CHAPTER VI. 

DEAD THIS TWENTY YEARS 47 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE STATEMENT OF TIBBIE BIRSK 59 






CHAPTER VIIL 


^ PAGE 

A CLOAK WITH BEADS ... 67 

^ CHAPTER IX. 

♦ 

THE POWER OF BEAUTY ... .... ... ... 8o^ 

CHAPTER X. 

A MAGNUM OPUS S8 

CHAPTER XI. 

THE GHOST CRADLE... 95 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE TRAGEDY OF A WIFE I06 

CHAPTER XIII. 

MAKING THE BEST OF IT ^ II4 

CHAPTER XIV. 

VISITORS AT THE MANSE 1 23 

CHAPTER XV. 

HOW GAVIN BIRSE PUT IT TO MAG LOWNIE 133 - 

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE SON FROM LONDON 1 43 

CHAPTER XVIL 

A HOME FOR GENIUSES 158 


CONTENTS. 


7 


CHAPTER XVIIL 

PAGE 

LEEBY AND JAMIE ... 165 

CHAPTER XIX. 

A TALE OF A GLOVE 177 

CHAPTER XX. 

THE LAST NIGHT 188 

CHAPTER XXI. 

JESS LEFT ALONE ... 198 

CHAPTER XXII. 

JAMIE’S HOME-COMING ... 307 



CHAPTER L 


THE HOUSE ON THE BRAE. 

On the bump of green round which the brae 
twists, at the top of the brae, and within cry of 
T’nowhead Farm, still stands a one-storey house, 
whose whitewashed walls, streaked with the dis- 
coloration that rain leaves, look yellow when the 
snow comes. In the old days the stiff ascent left 
Thrums behind, and where is now the making of 
a suburb was only a poor row of dwellings and 
a manse, with Hendry’s cot to watch the brae. 
The house stood bare, without a shrub, in a 
garden whose paling did not go all the way round, 
the potato pit being only kept out of the road, that 
here sets off southward, by a broken dyke of stones 
and earth. On each side of the slate-coloured door 
• was a window of knotted glass. Ropes were flung 
over the thatch to keep the roof on in wind. 


2 


2 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


Into this humble abode I would take any one 
who cares to accompany me. But you must not 
come in a contemptuous mood, thinking that the 
poor are but a stage removed from beasts of burden, 
as some cruel writers of these days say ; nor will I 
have you turn over with your foot the shabby 
horse-hair chairs that Leeby kept so speckless, and 
Hendry weaved for years to buy, and Jess so loved 
to look upon. 

I speak of the chairs, but if we go together into 
the “ room ” they will not be visible to you. For 
a long time the house has been to let. Here, 
on the left of the doorway, as we enter, is the room, 
without a shred of furniture in it except the boards 
of two closed-in beds. The flooring is not steady, 
and here and there holes have been eaten into the 
planks. You can scarcely stand upright beneath the 
decaying ceiling. Worn boards and ragged walls, 
and the rusty ribs fallen from the fireplace, are all 
that meet your eyes, but I see a round, unsteady, 
waxcloth-covered table, with four books lying at 
equal distances on it. There are six prim chairs, 
two of them not to be sat upon, backed against 
the walls, and between the window and the fire- 


THE HOUSE ON THE BRAE. 


3 


place a chest of drawers, with a snowy coverlet 
On the drawers stands a board with coloured 
marbles for the game of solitaire, and I have only 
to open the drawer with the loose handle to bring 
out the dambrod. In the carved wood frame over 
the window hangs Jamie*s portrait ; in the only 
other frame a picture of Daniel in the den of lions, 
sewn by Leeby in wool. Over the chimney-piece 
with its shells, in which the roar of the sea can 
be heard, are strung three rows of birds’ eggs. 
Once again we might be expecting company to 
tea. 

The passage is narrow. There is a square hole 
between the rafters, and a ladder leading up to it. 
You may climb and look into the attic, as Jess 
liked to hear me call my tiny garret-room. I am 
stiffer now than in the days when I lodged with 
Jess during the summer holiday I am trying to 
bring back, and there is no need for me to ascend. 
Do not laugh at the newspapers with which Leeby 
papered the garret, nor at the yarn Hendry stuffed 
into the windy holes. He did it to warm the 
house for Jess. But the paper must have gone 
to pieces and the yarn rotted decades ago. 


4 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


I have kept the kitchen for the last, as Jamie 
did on the dire day of which I shall have to tell. 
It has a flooring of stone now, where there used 
only to be hard earth, and a broken pane in the 
window is indifferently stuffed with rags. But it 
is the other window I turn to, with a pain at my 
heart, and pride and fondness too, the square foot 
of glass where Jess sat in her chair and looked 
down the brae. 

Ah, that brae ! The history of tragic little 
Thrums is sunk into it like the stones it swallows 
in the winter. We have all found the brae long 
and steep in the spring of life. Do you remember 
how the child you once were sat at the foot of it 
and wondered if a new world began at the top? 
It climbs from a shallow burn, and we used to sit 
on the brig a long time before venturing to climb. 
As boys we ran up the brae. As men and women, 
young and in our prime, we almost forgot that it 
was there. But the autumn of life comes, and the 
brae grows steeper ; then the winter, and once 
again we are as the child pausing apprehensively 
on the brig. Yet are we no longer the child; we 
look now for no new world at the top, only 


THE HOUSE ON THE BRAE. 


5 


for a little garden and a tiny house, and a hand- 
loom in the house. It is only a garden of 
kail and potatoes, but there may be a line of 
daisies, white and red, on each side of the narrow 
footpath, and honeysuckle over the door. Life is 
not always hard, even after backs grow bent, and 
we know that all braes lead only to the grave. 

This is Jess’s window. For more than twenty 
years shS had not been able to go so far as the 
door, and only once while I knew her was she ben 
in the room. With her husband, Hendry, or their 
only daughter, Lecby, to lean upon, and her hand 
clutching her staff, she took twice a day, when she 
was strong, the journey between her bed and the 
window where stood her chair. She did not lie 
there looking at the sparrows or at Leeby redding 
up the house, and I hardly ever heard her com- 
plain. All the sewing was done by her ; she often 
baked on a table pushed close to the window, and 
by leaning forward she could stir the porridge. 
Lecby was seldom off her feet, but I do not know 
that she did more than Jess, who liked to tell me, 
when she had a moment to spare, that she had a 
terrible lot to be thankful for. 


6 


A WINDOIV JN THRUMS, 


To those who dwell in great cities Thrums is 
only a small place, but what a clatter of life it has 
for me when I come to it from my school-house in 
the glen. Had my lot been cast in a town I would 
no doubt have sought country parts during my 
September holiday, but the school-house is quiet 
even when the summer takes brakes full of sports- 
men and others past the top of my footpath, and I 
was always light-hearted when Craigiebuckle’s cart 
bore me into the din of Thrums. I only once 
stayed during the whole of my holiday at the 
house on the brae, but I knew its inmates for 
many years, including Jamie, the son, who was a 
barber in London. Of their ancestry I never heard. 
With us it was only some of the articles of fur- 
niture, or perhaps a snuff-mull, that had a genea- 
logical tree. In the house on the brae was a great 
kettle, called the boiler, that was said to be fifty 
years old in the days of Hendry’s grandfather, of 
wliom nothing more is known. Jess’s chair, which 
had carved arms and a seat stuffed with rags, had 
been Snecky Hobart’s father’s before it was hers, 
and old Snecky bought it at a roup in the Tene- 
ments. Jess’s rarest possession was, perhaps, the 


THE HOUSE ON THE BRAE. 


christening robe that even people at a distance 
came to borrow. Her mother could count up a 
hundred persons who had been baptized in it. 

Every one of the hundred, I believe, is dead, and 
even I cannot now pick out Jess and Hendry’s 
grave ; but I heard recently that the christening robe 
is still in use. It is strange that I should still be 
left after so many changes, one of the three or four 
who can to-day stand on the brae and point out 
Jess’s window. The little window commands the 
incline to the point where the brae suddenly jerks 
out of sight in its climb down into the town. The 
steep path up the commonty makes for this elbow 
of the brae, and thus, whichever way the traveller 
takes, it is here that he comes first into sight of 
the window. Here, too, those who go to the town 
from the south get their first glimpse of Thrums. 

Carts pass up and down the brae every few 
minutes, and there comes an occasional gig. Sel- 
dom is the brae empty, for many live beyond the 
top of it now, and men and women go by to their 
work, children to school or play. Not one of the 
children I see from the window to-day is known 
to me, and most of the men and women T only 


8 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


recognize by their likeness to their parents. That 
sweet-faced old woman with the shawl on her 
shoulders may be one of the girls who was playing 
at the game of palaulays when Jamie stole into 
Thrums for the last time ; the man who is leaning 
on the commonty gate gathering breath for the last 
quarter of the brae may, as a barefooted callant, 
have been one of those who chased Cree Queery 
past the poor-house. I cannot say; but this I know, 
that the grandparents of most of these boys and 
girls were once young with me. If I see the sons 
and daughters of my friends grown old, I also see 
the grandchildren spinning the peerie and hunker- 
ing at I-dree-I-dree — I-droppit-it— as we did so long 
ago. The world remains as young as ever. The 
lovers that met on the commonty in the gloaming 
are gone, but there are other lovers to take their 
place, and still the commonty is here. The sun 
had sunk on a fine day in June, early in the cen- 
tury, when Hendry and Jess, newly married, he 
in a rich moleskin waistcoat, she in a white net 
cap, walked to the house on the brae that was to 
be their home. So Jess has told me. Here again 
has been just such a day, and somewhere in 


THE HOUSE ON THE BRAE. 


9 


Thrums there may be just such a couple, setting 
out for their home behind a horse with white ears 
instead of walking, but with the same hopes and 
fears, and the same love light in their eyes. The 
world does not age. The hearse passes over the 
brae and up the straight burying-ground road, but 
still there is a cry for the christening robe. 

Jess’s window was a beacon by night to travellers 
in the dark, and it will be so in the future when 
there are none to remember Jess. There are many 
such windows still, with loving faces behind them. 
From them we watch for the friends and relatives 
who are coming back, and some, alas! watch in 
vain. Not every one returns who takes the elbow 
of the brae bravely, or waves his handkerchief to 
those who watch from the window with wet eyes, 
and some return too late. To Jess, at her window 
always when she was not in bed, things happy and 
mournful and terrible came into view. At this 
window she sat for twenty years or more looking 
at the world as through a telescope ; and here an 
awful ordeal was gone through after her sweet 
untarnished soul had been given back to God. 


CHAPTER 11. 


ON THE TRACK OF THE MINISTER. 

On the afternoon of the Saturday that carted me 
and my two boxes to Thrums, I was ben in the 
room playing Hendry at the dambrod. I had one 
of the room chairs, but Leeby brought a chair from 
the kitchen for her father. Our door stood open, 
and as Hendry often pondered for two minutes 
with his hand on a ** man,” I could have joined in 
the gossip that was going on but the house. 

“Ay, weel, then, Leeby,” said Jess, suddenly, 
“I’ll warrant the minister ’ll no be preachin’ the 
morn.” 

This took Leeby to the window. 

“Yea, yea,” she said (and I knew she was 
nodding her head sagaciously) ; I looked out at 
the room window, but all I could see was a man 
wheeling an empty barrow down the brae. 


ON THE TRACE OF THE MINISTER. i 


"That’s Robbie Tosh,” continued Leeby ; "an’ 
there’s nae doot ’at he’s makkin for the minister’s, 
for he has on his black coat. He’ll be to row the 
minister’s luggage to the post-cart Ay, an’ that’s 
Davit Lunan’s barrow. I ken it by the shaft’s 
bein’ spliced wi’ yarn. Davit broke the shaft at 
the saw-mill.” 

“He’ll be gaen awa for a curran (number of) 
days,” said Jess, “or he would juist hae taen his 
bag. Ay, he’ll be awa to Edinbory, to see the 
lass.” 

" I wonder wha’ll be to preach the morn — tod, 
it’ll likely be Mr. Skinner, frae Dundee ; him an’ 
the minister’s chief, ye ken.” 

“Ye micht'gang up to the attic, Leeby, an* see 
if the spare bedroom vent (chimney) at the manse 
is gaen. We’re sure, if it’s Mr. Skinner, he’ll 
come wi’ the post frae Tilliedrum the nicht, an’ 
sleep at the manse.” 

“ Weel, I assure ye,” said Leeby, descending from 
the attic, “ it’ll no be Mr. Skinner, for no only is 
the spare bedroom vent no gaen, but the blind’s 
drawn doon frae tap to fut, so they’re no even 
airin’ the room. Na, it canna be him ; an’ what’s 


12 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


mair, it’ll be naebody ’at’s to bide a’ nicht at the 
manse.” 

“ I wouldna say that ; na, na. It may only be 
a student ; an’ Marget Dundas ” (the minister’s 
mother and housekeeper) “ michtna think it neces- 
sary to put on a fire for him.” 

“Tod, ril tell ye wha it’ll be. I wonder I didna 
think o’ ’im sooner. It’ll be the lad Wilkie ; him 
’at’s mither mairit on Sam’l Duthie’s wife’s brither. 
They bide in Cupar, an’ I mind ’at when the son 
was here twa or three year syne he was juist gaen 
to begin the diveenity classes in Glesca.” 

“If that’s so, Leeby, he would be sure to bide 
wi* Sam’l. Hendry, hae ye heard ’at Sam’l 
Duthie’s expeckin’ a stranger the nicht ? ” 

“ Hand yer tongue,” replied Hendry, who was 
having the worst of the game. 

“Ay, but I ken he is,” said Leeby triumphantly 
to her mother, “ for ye mind when I was in at 
Johnny Watt’s (the draper’s) Chirsty (Sam’l’s wife) 
was buyin’ twa yards o’ chintz, an’ I couldna think 
what she would be wantin’ ’t for ! ** 

“I thocht Johnny said to ye ’at it was for a 
present to Chirsty’s auntie } ” 


ON THE TRACK OF THE MINISTER. 13 


" Ay, but he juist guessed that ; for, though he 
tried to get oot o’ Chirsty what she wanted the 
chintz for, she wouldna tell ’im. But I see noo 
what she was after. The lad Wilkie ’ll be to bide 
wi’ them, and Chirsty had bocht the chintz to 
cover the airm-chair wi’. It’s ane o’ thae hair- 
bottomed chairs, but terrible torn, so she’ll hae 
covered it for ’im to sit on.” 

“ I wouldna wonder but ye’re richt, Leeby ; for 
Chirsty would be in an oncommon fluster if she 
thocht the lad’s mither was likely to hear ’at her 
best chair was torn. Ay, ay, bein’ a man, he 
wouldna think to tak aff the chintz an’ hae a look 
at the chair withoot it.” 

Here Hendry, who had paid no attention to 
the conversation, broke in — 

“ Was ye speiriif had I seen Sam’l Duthie ? I 
saw ’im yesterday buyin’ a fender at WiH’um 
Crook’s roup.” 

“ A fender ! Ay, ay, that settles the queistion,” 
said Leeby ; “ I’ll warrant the fender was for 
Chirsty’s parlour. It’s preyed on Chirsty’s mind, 
they say, this fower-and-thirty year ’at she doesna 
hae a richt parlour fender.” 


14 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


“Leeby, look! That’s Robbie Tosh wi’ the 
barrow. He has a michty load o’ luggage. Am 
thinkin’ the' minister’s bound for Tilliedrum.” 

“ Na, he’s no, he’s gaen to Edinbory, as ye micht 
ken by the bandbox. That’ll be his mither’s 
bonnet he’s takkin’ back to get altered. Ye’ll mind 
she was never pleased wi’ the set o’ the flowers.” 

“Weel, weel, here comes the minister himsel, an’ 
very snod he is. Ay, Marget’s been puttin’ new 
braid on his coat, an’ he’s carryin’ the sma* black 
bag he bocht in Dundee last year: he’ll hae’s 
nicht-shirt an’ a comb in’t, I dinna doot Ye 
micht rin to the corner, Leeby, an’ see if he cries 
in at Jess McTaggart’s in passin’.” 

"It’s my opeenion,” said Leeby, returning ex- 
citedly from the corner, " ’at the lad Wilkie’s no 
to be preachin’ the morn, after a’% When I gangs 
to the corner, at ony rate, what think ye’s the first 
thing I see but the minister an’ Sam’l Duthie 
meetin’ face to face ? Ay, weel, it’s gospel am 
tellin’ ye when I say as Sam’l flung back his head 
an’ walkit richt by the minister ! ” 

“ Losh keep! s a’, Leeby ; ye say that ? They 
maun hae haen a quarrel.” 


ON THE TRACK OF THE MINISTER. 15 


* I’m thinkin’ well hae Mr. Skinner i’ the poopit 
the morn after a*.** 

“ It may be, it may be. Ay, ay, look, Leeby, 
whatna bit kimmer’s that wi’ the twa jugs in her 
hand ? ” 

“ Eh ? Ou, it’ll be Lawyer Ogiivy’s servant 
lassieky gaen to the farm o’ T’nowhead for the 
milk. She gangs ilka Saturday nicht. But what 
did ye say — twa jugs } Tod, let’s see ! Ay, she 
has so, a big jug an’ a little ane. The little ane 
’ll be for cream ; an’, sal, the big ane’s bigger na 
usual.” 

“ There maun be something gaen on at the 
lawyer’s if they’re buyin’ cream, Leeby. Their 
reg’lar thing’s twopence worth o’ milk.” 

“ Ay, but I assure ye that sma’ jug’s for cream, 
an’ I dinna doot mysel but ’at there’s to be fower- 
pence worth o’ milk this nicht.” 

“ There’s to be a puddin’ made the morn, Leeby. 
Ou, ay, a’ thing points to that ; an’ we’re very sure 
there’s nae puddins at the lawyer’s on the Sabbath 
onless they hae company.” 

“ I dinna ken wha they can hae, if it be na that 
brither o’ the wife’s ’at bides oot by Aberdeen.” 


i6 A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 

" Na, it’s no him, Leeby ; na, na. He’s no weel 

to do, an’ they wouldna be bayin’ cream for 
>> 

im. 

“ I’ll run up to the attic again, an’ see if there’s 
ony stir at the lawyer’s hoose.” 

By and by Leeby returned in triumph. 

“ Ou, ay,” she said, “ they’re expectin’ veesitors 
at the lawyer’s, for I could see twa o’ the bairns 
dressed up to the nines, an’ Mistress Ogilvy doesna 
dress at them in that wy for naething.” 

“It fair beats me though, Leeby, to guess wha’s 
cornin’ to them. Ay, but stop a meenute, I wouldna 
wonder, no, really I would not wonder but what 
it’ll be ” 

“The very thing ’at was passin’ through my 
head, mother.” 

“Ye mean ’at the lad Wilkie *11 be to bide wi’ 
the lawyer i’stead o’ wi’ Sam’l Duthie } Sal, am 
thinkin’ that’s it. Ye ken Sam’l an’ the lawyer 
married on cousins ; but Mistress Ogilvy ay lookit 
on Chirsty as dirt aneath her feet. She would be 
glad to get a minister, though, to the hoose, an' so 
I warrant the lad Wilkie '11 be to bide a’ nicht at 
the lawyer’s.” 


ON THE TRACK OF THE MINISTER. 17 

** But what would Chirsty be doin’ gettin’ the 
chintz an’ the fender in that case ? ” 

“ Ou, she’d been expeckin’ the- lad, of course. 
Sal, she’ll be in a michty tantrum aboot this. I 
wouldna wonder though she gets Sam’l to gang 
'ower to the U. P.’s.” 

Leeby went once more to the attic. 

“Ye’re wrang, mother,” she cried out. “Wha- 
ever’s to preach the morn is to bide at the manse, 
for the minister’s servant’s been at Baker Duff’s 
buyin’ short-bread — half a lippy, nae doot.” 

“ Are ye sure o’ that, Leeby } ” 

“ Oh, am certain. The servant gaed in to Duff’s 
the noo, an’, as ye ken fine, the manse fowk doesna 
deal wi’ him, except they’re wantin’ short-bread. 
He’s Auld Kirk.” 

Leeby returned to the kitchen, and Jess sat for 
a time ruminating. 

“ The lad Wilkie,” she said at last, triumphantly, 
“ ’ll be to bide at Lawyer Ogilvy’s ; but he’ll be 
gaen to the manse the morn for a tea-dinner.” 

‘‘ But what,” asked Leeby, “ aboot the milk an’ 
the cream for the lawyer’s ? ” 

“ Ou, they’ll be hae’n a puddin’ for the supper 

3 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


the nicht. That’s a michty genteel thing, I’ve 
heard.” 

It turned out that Jess was right in every 
particular. 


CHAPTER III 


PREPARING TO RECEIVE COMPANY. 

Leeby was at the fire brandenng a quarter of 
steak on the tongs, when the house was flung into 
consternation by Hendry’s casual remark that he 
had seen Tibbie Mealmaker in the town with her 
man. 

“ The Lord preserve’s ! ” cried Leeby. 

Jess looked quickly at the clock. 

** Half fower ! ” she said, excitedly. 

“ Then it canna be dune,” said Leeby, falling 
despairingly into a chair, ** for they may be here 
ony meenute.” 

" It’s most michty,” said Jess, turning on her 
husband, ‘^’at ye should tak a pleasure in bringin’ 
this hoose to disgrace. Hoo did ye no tell’s 
suner ? " 


20 


A WINDOW JN I'll RUMS, 


** I fair forgot,” Hendry answered, “ but what’s 
a’ yer steer ? ” 

Jess looked at me (she often did this) in a way 
that meant, “ What a man is this I’m tied 
to!” 

** Steer ! ” she exclaimed. “ Is’t no time we 
was makkin’ a steer ? They’ll be in for their tea 
ony meenute, an’ the room no sae muckle as 
sweepit. Ay, an’ me lookin’ like a sweep ; an’ 
Tibbie Mealmaker ’at’s sae partikler genteel seein’ 
you sic a sicht as ye are ! ” 

Jess shook Hendry out of his chair, while Leeby 
began to sweep with the one hand, and agitatedly 
to unbutton her wrapper with the other. 

“ She didna see me,” said Hendry, sitting down 
forlornly on the table. 

“Get aff that table!” cried Jess. ** See baud 
o’ the besom,” she said to Leeby. 

“ For mercy’s sake, mother,” said Leeby, “ gie 
yer face a dicht, an’ put on a clean mutch.” 

“ I’ll open the door if they come afore you’re 
ready,” said Hendry, as Leeby pushed him against 
the dresser. 

“Ye daur to speak aboot openin’ the door, an’ 


PREPARING TO RECEIVE COMPANY, 


21 


you sic a mess!” cried Jess, with pins in her 
mouth. 

"Havers!” retorted Hendry, “A man canna 
be aye washin’ at ’imsel.” 

Seeing that Hendry was as much in the way as 
myself, I invited liim upstairs to the attic, whence 
we heard Jess and Lecby upbraiding each other 
shrilly. I was aware that the room was speckless ; 
but for all that, Leeby was turning it upside down. 

" She’s aye ta’en like that,” Hendry said to me, 
referring to his wife, “ when she’s expectin’ com- 
pany. Ay, it’s a peety she canna tak things 
cannier.” 

“Tibbie Mealmaker must be some one of im- 
portance } ” I asked. 

“ Ou, she’s naething by the ord’nar* ; but ye 
see she was mairit to a Tilliedrum man no lang 
syne, an’ they’re said to hae a michty grand 
establishment. Ay, they’ve a wardrobe spleet 
new ; an’ what think ye Tibbie wears ilka day ? ” 

I shook my head. 

"It was Chirsty Miller ’at put it through the 
toon,” Hendry continued. " Chirsty was in Tillie- 
drum last Teisday or Wednesday, an* Tibbie gae 


22 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


her a cup o’ tea. Ay, weel, Tibbie telt Chirsty ’at 
she wears hose ilka day,’' 

“ Wears hose ? ” 

“Ay. It’s some michty grand kind o’ stockin’. 
I never heard o’t in this toon'. Na, there’s nacbocly 
in Thrums ’at wears hose.” 

“And who did Tibbie get.?” I asked; for in 
Thrums they say, “Wha did she get?” and “ Wha 
did he tak ? ” 

“ His name’s Davit Curly. Ou, a crittur fu’ o’ 
maggots, an’ nae great match, for he’s juist the 
Tilliedrum bill-sticker.” 

At this moment Jess shouted from her chair 
(she was burnishing the society teapot as she 
spoke), “ Mind, Hendry McQumpha, ’at upon nae 
condition are ye to mention the bill-stickin’ afore 
Tibbie I” 

“Tibbie,” Hendry explained to me, “ is a terrible 
vain tid, an’ doesna think the bill-stickin’ genteel. 
Ay, they say ’at if she meets Davit in the street 
wi’ his paste pot an’ the brush in his hands she 
pretends no to ken ’im.” 

Every time Jess paused to think she cried up 
orders, such as — 


PREPARING TO RECEIVE COMPANY. 23 


“ Dinna call her Tibbie, mind ye. Always 
address her as Mistress Curly.” 

“ Shak’ hands wi’ baith o’ them, an’ say ye hope 
they’re in the enjoyment o’ guid health.” 

“ Dinna put yer feet on the table.” 

“ Mind, you’re no’ to mention ’at ye kent they 
were in the toon.” 

“ When onybody passes ye yer tea say, ‘ Thank 
ye.* ” 

Dinna stir yer tea as if ye was churnin’ butter, 
nor let on ’at the scones is no our ain bakin’.” 

** If Tibbie says ony thing aboot the china yer 
no’ to say ’at we dinna use it ilka day.” 

“Dinna lean back in the big chair, for it’s broken, 
an’ Leeby’s gi’en it a lick o’ glue this meenute.” 

“When Leeby gies ye a kick aneath the table 
that’ll be a sign to ye to say grace.” 

Hendry looked at me apologetically while these 
instructions came up. 

“ I winna dive my head wi’ sic nonsense,” he 
said ; “it’s no’ for a man body to be sae crammed 
fu’ o* manners.” 

“Come awa doon,” Jess shouted to him, “aq* 
put on a clean dickey.” 


24 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


" I’ll better do’t to please her,” said Hendry, 
“ though for my ain part I dinna like the feel o’ 
a dickey on week-days. Na, they mak’s think it’s 
the Sabbath.” 

Ten minutes afterwards I went downstairs to 
see how the preparations were progressing. Fresh 
muslin curtains had been put up in the room. 
The grand footstool, worked by Leeby, was so 
placed that Tibbie could not help seeing it ; and 
a fine cambric handkerchief, of which Jess was 
very proud, was hanging out of a drawer as if by 
accident. An antimacassar lying carelessly on the 
seat of a chair concealed a rent in the horse-hair, 
and the china ornaments on the mantlepiece were 
so placed that they looked whole. Leeby’s black 
merino was hanging near the window in a good 
light, and Jess’s Sabbath bonnet, which was never 
worn, occupied a nail beside it. The tea-things 
stood on a tray in the kitchen bed, whence they 
could be quickly brought into the room, just as if 
they were always ready to be used daily. Leeby, 
as yet in deshabille, was shaving her father at a 
tremendous rate, and Jess, looking as fresh as a 
daisy was ready to receive the visitors. She was 


PREPARING TO RECEIVE COMPANY. 2\ 

peering through the tiny window- blind looking for 
them. 

“ Be cautious, Leeby,** Hendry was saying, when 
Jess shook her hand at him. “ Wheesht,** she 
whispered ; “ they’re cornin’.** 

Hendry was hustled into his Sabbath coat, and 
then came a tap at the door, a very genteel tap. 
Jess nodded to Leeby, who softly shoved Hendry 
into the room. 

The tap was repeated, but Leeby pushed her 
father into a chair and thrust Barrow’s Sermons 
open into his hand. Then she stole but the 
house, and swiftly buttoned her wrapper, speaking 
to Jess by nods the while. There was a third 
knock, whereupon Jess said, in a loud, Englishy 
voice — 

“ Was that not a chap (knock) at the door?” 

Hendry was about to reply, but she shook her 
fist at him. Next moment Leeby opened the 
door. I was upstairs, but I heard Jess say — 

“Dear me, if it’s not Mrs. Curly — and Mr. 
Curly! And hoo are ye? Come in, by. Weel, 
this is, indeed, a pleasant surprise I ” 


CHAPTER IV. 


WAITING FOR THE DOCTOR, 

Jess had gone early to rest, and the door of her 
bed in the kitchen was pulled to. From her 
window I saw Hendry buying dulse. 

Now and again the dulseman wheeled his slimy 
boxes to the top of the brae, and sat there stolidly 
on the shafts of his barrow. Many passed him 
by, but occasionally some one came to rest by his 
side. Unless the customer was loquacious, there 
was no bandying of words, and Hendry merely 
unbuttoned his east-trouser pocket, giving his 
body the angle at which the pocket could be most 
easily filled by the dulseman. He then deposited 
his halfpenny, and moved on. Neither had 
spoken ; yet in the country they would have 
roared their predictions about to-morrow to a 
ploughman half a field away. 


IVAITIAG FOR THE DOCTOR. 


27 


Dulse is roasted by twisting it round the tongs 
fired to a red-heat, and the house was soon heavy 
with the smell of burning sea-weed. Leeby was 
at the dresser munching it from a broth-plate, 
while Hendry, on his knees at the fireplace, 
gingerly tore off the blades of dulse that were 
sticking to the tongs, and licked his singed fingers. 

“ Whaur’s yer mother ? ” he asked Leeby. 

“ Ou,” said Leeby, whaur would she be but in 
her bed?” 

Hendry took the tongs to the door, and would 
have cleaned them himself, had not Leeby (who 
often talked his interfering ways over with her 
mother) torn them from his hands. 

“ Leeby ! ” cried Jess at that moment 

“Ay,” answered Leeby, leisurely, not noticing, 
as I happened to do, that Jess spoke in an agitated 
voice. 

“What is’t?” asked Hendry, who liked to be 
told things. 

He opened the door of the bed. 

“ Yer mother’s no weel,” he said to Leeby. 

Leeby ran to the bed, and I went ben the 
house. 


28 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


In another two minutes we were a group of four 
in the kitchen, staring vacantly. Death could not 
have startled us more, tapping thrice that quiet 
night on the window-pane. 

“ It’s diphtheria ! ” said Jess, her hands trembling 
as she buttoned her wrapper. 

She looked at me, and Leeby looked at me. 

“ It’s no, it’s no,” cried Leeby, and her voice was 
as a fist shaken at my face. She blamed me for 
hesitating in my reply. But ever since this malady 
left me a lonely dominie for life, diphtheria has 
been a knockdown word for me. Jess had dis- 
covered a great white spot on her throat. I knew 
the symptoms. 

" Is’t dangerous ? ” asked Hendry, who once had 
a headache years before, and could still refer to it 
as a reminiscence. 

“ Them ’at has *t never recovers,” said Jess, 
sitting down very quietly. A stick fell from the 
fire, and she bent forward to replace it. 

“ They do recover,” cried Leeby, again turning 
angry eyes on me. 

I could not face her; I had known so many 
who did not recover. She put her hand on her 
mother’s shoulder? 


WAITING FOR THE DOCTOR, 


29 


“ Mebbe ye would be better in yer bed,” sug- 
gested Hendry. 

No one spoke. 

“ When I had the headache,” said Hendry, “ I 
was better in my bed.” 

Leeby had taken Jess’s hand — a worn old hand 
that had many a time gone out in love and kind- 
ness when younger hands were cold. Poets have 
sung and fighting men have done great deeds for 
hands that never had such a record. 

“ If ye could eat something/* said Hendry, “ I 
would gae to the flesher’s for 't. 1 mind when I 

had the headache, hoo a small steak ” 

“Gae awa for the doctor, rayther,” broke in 
Leeby. 

Jess started, for sufferers think there is less hope 
for them after the doctor has been called in to 
pronounce sentence. 

“ I winna hae the doctor,” she said, anxiously. 

In answer to Leeby’s nods, Hendry slowly 
pulled out his boots from beneath the table, and 
sat looking at them, preparatory to putting them 
on. He was beginning at last to be a little scared, 
though his face did not show it. 


30 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


“ I winna hae ye,” cried Jess, getting to her feet, 
“ga’en to the doctor’s sic a sicht. Yer coat’s a* 
yarn.” 

“ Havers,” said Hendry, but Jess became frantic. 

I offered to go for the doctor, but while I was up- 
stairs looking for my bonnet I heard the door slam. 
Leeby had become impatient, and darted off her- 
self, buttoning her jacket probably as she ran. 
When I returned to the kitchen, Jess and Hendry 
were still by the fire. Hendry was beating a 
charred stick into sparks, and his wife sat with her 
hands in her lap. I saw Hendry look at her once 
or twice, but he could think of nothing to say. 
His terms of endearment had died out thirty-nine 
years before with his courtship. He had forgotten 
the words. For his life he could not have crossed 
over to Jess and put his arm round her. Yet he 
was uneasy. His eyes wandered round the poorly 
lit room. 

" Will ye hae a drink o* watter ? ” he asked. 

There was a sound of footsteps outside. 

“ That’ll be him,” said Hendry in a whisper. 

Jess started to her feet, and told Hendry to help 
her ben the hous^, 


WAITING FOR THE DOCTOR, 


31 


The steps died away, but I fancied that Jess, 
now highly strung, had gone into hiding, and I 
went after her. I was mistaken. She had lit the 
room lamp, turning the crack in the globe to the 
wall. The sheepskin hearthrug, which was generally 
carefully packed away beneath the bed, had been 
spread out before the empty fireplace, and Jess 
was on the arm-chair hurriedly putting on her 
grand black mutch with the pink flowers. 

“I was juist makkin’ mysel respectable,” she 
said, but without life in her voice. 

This was the only time I ever saw her in the room. 

Leeby returned panting to say that the doctor 
might be expected in an hour. He was away 
among the hills. 

The hour passed reluctantly. Leeby lit a fire 
ben the house, and then put on her Sabbath dress. 
She sat with her mother in the room. Never 
before had I seen Jess sit so quietly, for her way 
was to work until, as she said herself, she was 
ready “ to fall into her bed.” 

Hendry wandered between the two rooms, 
always in the way when Leeby ran to the window 
to see if that was the doctor at last He would 


32 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


stand gaping in the middle of the room for five 
minutes, then slowly withdraw to stand as drearily 
but the house. His face lengthened. At last he 
sat down by the kitchen fire, a Bible in his hand. 
It lay open on his knee, but he did not read much. 
He sat there with his legs outstretched, looking 
straight before him. I believe he saw Jess young 
again. His face was very solemn, and his mouth 
twitched. The fire sank into ashes unheeded- 

I sat alone at my attic window for hours, wait- 
ing for the doctor. From the attic I could see 
nearly all Thrums, but, until very late, the night 
was dark, and the brae, except immediately before 
the door, was blurred and dim. A sheet of light 
canopied the square as long as a cheap Jack 
paraded his goods there. It was gone before the 
moon came out. Figures tramped, tramped up 
the brae, passed the house in shadow and stole 
silently on. A man or boy whistling seemed to 
fill the valley. The moon arrived too late to be 
of service to any wayfarer. Everybody in Thrums 
was asleep but ourselves, and the doctor who never 
came. 

About midnight Hendry climbed the attic stair 


Waiting for the doctor, 33 

and joined me at the window. His hand was 
shaking as he pulled back the blind. I began to 
realize that his heart could still overflow. 

“She’s waur,” he whispered, like one who had 
lost his voice. 

For a long time he sat silently, his hand on the 
blind. He was so diflerent from the Hendry I 
had known, that I felt myself in the presence of 
a strange man. His eyes were glazed with staring 
at the turn of the brae where the doctor must first 
come into sight. His breathing became heavien 
till it was a gasp. Then I put my hand on his 
shoulder, and he stared at me. 

“ Nine-and-thirty years come June,” he said, 
speaking to himself. 

For this length of time, I knew, he and Jess 
had been married. He repeated the words at 
intervals. 

“ I mind — ” he began, and stopped. He was 
thinking of the spring-time of Jess’s life. 

The night ended as we watched ; then came 
the terrible moment that precedes the day — the 
moment known to shuddering watchers by sick 
beds, when a chill wind cuts through the house, 
4 


34 


A IVIN DOW IN THRUMS. 


and the world without seems cold in death. It is 
as if the heart of the earth did not mean to con- 
tinue beating. 

“ This is a fearsome nicht,” Hendry said, 
hoarsely. 

He turned to grope his way to the stairs, but 
suddenly went down on his knees to pray. . . . 

There was a quick step outside. I arose in 
time to see the doctor on the brae. He tried the 
latch, but Leeby was there to show him in. The 
door of the room closed on him. 

From the top of the stair I could see into the 
dark passage, and make out Hendry shaking at 
the door. I could hear the doctor’s voice, but not 
the words he said. There was a painful silence, 
and then Leeby laughed joyously. 

“ It’s gone,” cried Jess ; “ the white spot’s 
gone! Ye juist touched it, an’ it’s gone! Tell 
Hendry.” 

But Hendry did not need to be told. As Jess 
spoke I heard him say, huskily : “ Thank God ! ” 
and then he tottered back to the kitchen. When 
the doctor left, Hendry was still on Jess’s arm- 
chair, trembling like a man with the palsy. Ten 


WAITING FOR THE DOCTOR, 


35 


minutes afterwards I was preparing for bed, when 
he cried up the stair — 

“ Come awa’ doon.” 

I joined the family party in the room : Hendry 
was sitting close to Jess. 

“ Let us read,” he said, firmly, " in the fourteenth 
of John.” 


CHAPTER V. 


A HUMORIST ON HIS CALLING. 

After the eight o’clock bell had rung, Hendry 
occasionally crossed over to the farm of T’nowhead 
and sat on the pig-sty. If no one joined him he 
scratched the pig, and returned home gradually* 
Here what was almost a club held informal meet- 
ings, at which two or four, or even half a dozen 
assembled to debate, when there was any one to 
start them. The meetings were only memorable 
when Tammas Haggart was in fettle, to pronounce 
judgments in his well-known sarcastic way. Some- 
times we had got off the pig-sty to separate before 
Tammas was properly yoked There we might 
remain a long time, planted round him like trees^ 
for he was a mesmerising talker. 

There was a pail belonging to the pig-sty, which 


A HUMORIST ON HIS CALLING, 


37 


some one would turn bottom upwards and sit 
upon if the attendance was unusually numerous 
Tammas liked, however, to put a foot on it now 
and again in the full swing of a harangue, and 
when he paused for a sarcasm I have seen the 
pail kicked toward him. He had the wave of 
the arm that is so convincing in argument, and 
such a natural way of asking questions, that an 
audience not used to public speaking might have 
thought he wanted them to reply. It is an un- 
doubted fact, that when he went on the platform) 
at the time of the election, to heckle the Colonel, 
he paused in the middle of his questions to take a 
drink out of the tumbler of water which stood on 
the table. As soon as they saw what he was up 
to, the spectators raised a ringing cheer. 

On concluding his perorations, Tammas sent 
his snuff-mull round, but we had our own way of 
passing him a vote of thanks. One of the com- 
pany would express amazement at his gift of 
words, and the others would add, “ Man, man,” 
or, “Ye cow, Tammas,” or, “What a crittur ye 
are ! ** all which ejaculations meant the same 
thing. A new subject being thus ingeniously 


38 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


introduced, Tammas again put his foot on the 
pail. 

“I tak no creedit,” he said, modestly, on the 
evening, I remember, of Willie Pyatt’s funeral, 
“in bein’ able to speak wi’ a sort o’ faceelity on 
topics ’at I’ve made my ain.” 

“ Ay,” said T’nowhead, “ but it’s no the faceelity 
o’ speakin’ ’at taks me. There’s Davit Lunan ’at 
can speak like as if he had learned it aff a paper, 
an’ yet I canna thole ’im.” 

“Davit,” said Hendry, “doesna speak in a wy 
’at a body can follow ’im. He doesna gae even 
on. Jess says he’s juist like a man ay at the 
cross-roads, an’ no sure o’ his wy. But the stock 
has words, an’ no ilka body has that.” 

“If I was bidden to put Tammas’s gift in a 
word,” said T’nowhead, “ I would say ’at he had a 
wy. That’s what I would say.” 

“Weel, I suppose I have,” Tammas admitted, 
“ but, wy or no wy, I couldna put a point on my 
words if it wasna for my sense o’ humour. Lads, 
humour’s what gies the nip to speakin’.” 

“ It’s what maks ye a sarcesticist, Tammas,” 
said Hendry ; “ but what I wonder at is yer sayin’ 


A HUMORIST ON HIS CALLING. 


39 


the humorous things sae aisy like. Some says ye 
mak them up aforehand, but I ken that’s no true.” 

“No only is’t no true,” said Tammas, “but it 
couldna be true. Them *at says sic things, an’, weel 
I ken you’re meanin’ Davit Lunan, hasna nae idea o’ 
what humour is. It’s a thing ’at spouts oot o’ its 
ain accord. Some o’ the maist humorous things 
I’ve ever said cam oot, as a body may say, by 
themsels.” 

“ I suppose that’s the case,” said T’nowhead, 
“ an’ yet it maun be you ’at brings them up ? ” 

“ There’s no nae doubt aboot its bein’ the case,” 
said Tammas, “for I’ve watched mysel often. 
There was a vara guid instance occurred sune after 
I married Easie. The Earl’s son met me one day, 
aboot that time, i’ the Tenements, an’ he didna ken 
’at Chirsty was deid, an’ I’d married again. * Well, 
Haggart,’ he says, in his frank wy, ‘and how is 
your wife ? ’ ‘ She’s vara weel, sir,* I maks answer, 
‘ but she’s no the ane you mean.’ ” 

“ Na, he meant Chirsty,” said Hendry. 

“ Is that a’ the story ? ” asked T’nowhead. 

Tammas had been looking at us queerly. 

“There’s no nane o’ ye lauchin’,” he said, “but 


+0 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


I can assure ye the Earl’s son gaed east the toon 
lauchin’ like onything.” 

“ But what was’t he lauched at ? '' 

“Ou,” said Tammas, “a humorist doesna tell 
vvhaur the humour comes in.” 

“ No, but when you said that, did ye mean it to 
be humorous ? ” 

“Am no sayin’ I did, but as I’ve been tellin’ ye 
humour spouts oot by itsel.” 

“Ay, but do ye ken noo what the Earl’s son 
gaed awa lauchin’ at?” 

Tammas hesitated. 

“ I dinna exactly see’t,” he confessed, “but that’s 
no an oncommon thing. A humorist would often 
no ken ’at he was ane if it wasna by the wy he 
maks other fowk lauch. A body canna be ex- 
peckit baith to mak the joke an’ to see’t. Na, 
that would be doin’ twa fowks’ wark.” 

“ Weel, that’s reasonable enough, but I’ve often 
seen ye lauchin’,” said Hendry, “ lang afore other 
fowk lauched.” 

“Nae doubt,” Tammas explained, “an’ that’s 
because humour has twa sides, juist like a penny 
piece. When I say a humorous thing mysel I’m 


A HUMORIST ON HIS CALLING. 41 

dependent on other fowk to tak note o* the 
humour o’t, bein’ mysel ta’en up wi’ the makkin’ 
o’t Ay, but there’s things I see an’ hear ’at 
maks me lauch, an’ that’s the other side o’ 
humour.” 

“ I never heard it put sae plain afore,” said 
T’nowhead, “an’, sal, am no nane sure but what 
am a humorist too.” 

“Na, na, no you, T’nowhead,” said Tammas, 
hotly. 

“ Weel,” continued the farmer, “ I never set up 
for bein’ a humorist, but I can juist assure ye 
’at I lauch at queer things too. No lang syne I 
woke up i’ my bed lauchin’ like onything, an’ 
Lisbeth thocht I wasna weel. It was something 
I dreamed ’at made me lauch, I couldna think what 
it was, but I lauched richt. Was that no fell like 
a humorist } ” 

“ That was neither here nor there,” said Tammas. 

“ Na, dreams dinna coont, for we’re no responsible 
for them. Ay, an’ what’s mair, the mere lauchin’s 
no the important side o’ humour, even though ye 
hinna to be telt to lauch. The important side’s 
the other side, the sayin’ the humorous things 


42 


A WINDOW JN THRUMS. 


ril tell ye what : the humorist’s like a man firin’ 
at a target — he doesna ken whether he hits or no 
till them at the target tells ’im.” 

“ I would be of opeenion,” said Hendry, who was 
one of Tammas’s most staunch admirers, “ ’at 
another mark o’ the rale humorist was his seein’ 
humour in all things ? ” 

Tam mas shook his head — a way he had when 
Hendry advanced theories. 

“ I dinna hand wi’ that ava,” he said. ** I ken 
fine ’at Davit Lunan gaes aboot sayin* he sees 
humour in everything, but there’s nae surer sign 
’at he’s no a genuine humorist. Na, the rale 
humorist kens vara weel 'at there’s subjects withoot 
a spark o’ humour in them. When a subject rises to 
the sublime it should be regairded philosophically, 
an’ no humorously. Davit would lauch ’at the 
grandest thochts, whaur they only fill the true 
humorist wi’ awe. I’ve found it necessary to 
rebuke ’im at times whaur his lauchin’ was oot o’ 
place. He pretended aince on this vara spot to 
see humour i’ the origin o’ cock-fightin’.” 

“ Did he, man ? ” said Hendry ; “ I wasna here. 
Hut what is the origin o’ cock-fechtin ’ } ” 


A HUMORIST ON HIS CALLING. 


43 


“ It was a’ i* the Cheap Magazine^ said T'now- 
head. 

“ Was I sayin’ it wasna ? ” demanded Tammas. 
" It was through me readin’ the account oot o* the 
Cheap Magazine ’at the discussion arose.” 

" But what said the Cheapy was the origin o’ 
cock-fechtin’ ? ” 

“T’nowhead ’ll tell ye,” answered Tammas; “he 
says I dinna ken.” 

I never said naething o’ the kind,” returned 
T’nowhead, indignantly ; “ I mind o’ ye readin’t oot 
fine.” 

“Ay, weel,” said Tammas, “that’s a* richt. Ou, 
the origin o’ cock-fightin’ gangs back to the time 
o’ the Greek wars, a thoosand or twa years syne, 
mair or less. There was ane, Miltiades by 
name, ’at was the captain o’ the Greek army, an’ 
one day he led them doon the mountains to 
attack the biggest army ’at was ever gathered 
thegither.” 

“ They were Persians,” interposed T’nowhead. 

“ Are you tellin’ the story, or am I ? ” asked 
Tammas. “I kent fine 'at they were Persians. 
Weel, Miltiades had the matter o’ twenty 


44 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


thousand men wi’ ’im, and when they got to the 
foot o* the mountain, behold there was two cocks 
fechtin\*’ 

“ Man, man,” said Hendry, “ an’ was there cocks 
in thae days ? ” 

“ Ondoubtedly,” said Tammas, “ or hoo could 
thae twa hae been fechtin’ ? ” 

" Ye have me there, Tammas,” admitted Hendry. 
"Ye’re perfectly richt.*’ 

" Ay, then,” continued the stone-breaker, " when 
Miltiades saw the cocks at it wi’ all their micht, 
he stopped the army and addressed it. ‘ Behold ! * 
he cried, at the top o’ his voice, ‘ these cocks do 
not fight for their household gods, nor for the 
monuments of their ancestors, nor for glory, nor 
for liberty, nor for their children, but only because 
the one will not give way unto the other.* ” 

" It was nobly said,” declared Hendry ; “ na» 
cocks wouldna hae sae muckle understandin’ as to 
fecht for thae things. I wouldna wonder but what 
it was some laddies ’at set them at ane another.” 

" Hendry doesna see what Miltydes was after,” 
said T’nowhead. 

"Ye’ve taen’t up wrang, Hendry,” Tammas 


A HUMORIST ON HIS CALLING. 


43 


explained. “What Miltiades meant was *at if 
cocks could fecht sae weel oot o’ mere deviltry, 
surely the Greeks would fecht terrible for their 
gods an’ their bairns an’ the other things.” 

“ I see, I see ; but what was the monuments o’ 
their ancestors ? ” 

“Ou, that was the gravestanes they put up i’ 
their kirkyards.” 

“I wonder the other billies would want to tak 
them awa. They would be a michty wecht.” 

“Ay, but they wanted them, an’ nat’rally the 
Greeks stuck to the stanes they paid for.” 

“ So, so, an’ did Davit Lunan mak oot ’at there 
was humour in that?” 

“ He do so. He said it was a humorous thing 
to think o’ a hale army lookin’ on at twa cocks 
fechtin’. I assure ye I telt ’im ’at I saw nae 
humour in’t. It was ane o’ the most impressive 
sichts ever seen by man, an’ the Greeks was sae 
inspired by what Miltiades said ’at they sweepit 
the Persians oot o* their country.” 

We all agreed that Tammas’s was the genuine 
humour. 

“ An’ an enviable possession it is,” sa d Hendry 


46 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


“ In a wy/* admitted Tammas, “ but no in a’ 
wys.” 

He hesitated, and then added in a low voice — 

“ As sure as death, Hendry, it sometimes taks 
grip o’ me i’ the kirk itsel, an’ 1 can hardly keep 
frae lauchin’.” 


CHAPTER VI 


DEAD THIS TWENTY YEARS. 

In the lustiness of youth there are many who 
cannot feel that they, too, will die. The first 
fear stops the heart Even then they would 
keep death at arm’s length by making believe to 
disown him. Loved ones are taken away, and 
the boy, the girl, will not speak of them, as if 
that made the conqueror’s triumph the less. In 
time the fire in the breast burns low, and then 
in the last glow of the embers, it is sweeter to 
hold to what has been than to think of what 
may be. 

Twenty years had passed since Joey ran down 
the brae to play. Jess, his mother, shook her 
staff* fondly at him. A cart rumbled by, the 
driver nodding on the shaft. It rounded the 
corner and stopped suddenly, and then a woman 


48 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


screamed. A handful of men carried Joey’s dead 
body to his mother, and that was the tragedy of 
Jess’s life. 

Twenty years ago, and still Jess sat at the 
window, and still she heard that woman scream. 
Every other living being had forgotten Joey ; 
even to Hendry he was now scarcely a name, but 
there were times when Jess’s face quivered and 
her old arms went out for her dead boy. 

“ God’s will be done,” she said, “ but oh, I 
grudged Him my bairn terrible sair. I dinna 
want him back noo, an’ ilka day is takkin’ 
me nearer to him, but for mony a lang year I 
grudged him sair, sair. He was juist five 
minutes gone, an’ they brocht him back deid 
my Joey.” 

On the Sabbath day Jess could not go to 
church, and it was then, I think, that she was with 
Joey most. There was often a blessed serenity on 
her face when we returned, that only comes to those 
who have risen from their knees with their prayers 
answered. Then she was very close to the boy who 
died. Long ago she could not look out from her 
«7indow upon the brae, but now it was her seat in 


DEAD THIS TWENTY YEARS. 49 

church. There on the Sabbath evenings she 
sometimes talked to me of Joey. 

“It’s been a fine day,” she would say, “juist like 
that day. I thank the Lord for the sunshine noo, 
but oh, I thocht at the time I couldna look at the 
sun shinin’ again.” 

“ In all Thrums,” she has told me, and I know 
it to be true, “ there’s no a better man than 
Hendry. There’s them ’at’s cleverer in the wys 
o’ the world, but my man, Hendry McQumpha, 
never did naething in all his life ’at wasna weel 
intended, an’ though his words is common, it’s 
to the Lord he looks. I canna think but what 
Hendry’s pleasin’ to God. Oh, I dinna ken what 
to say wi’ thankfulness to Him when I mind 
hoo guid he’s been to me. There’s Leeby ’at I 
couldna hae done withoot, me bein’ sae silly 
(weak bodily), an’ ay Leeby’s stuck by me an* 
gien up her life, as ye micht say, for me. 
Jamie ” 

But then Jess sometimes broke down. 

“He’s so far awa,” she said, after a time, “an* aye 
when he gangs back to London after his holidays 
he has a fear he’ll never see me again, but he’s 
5 


50 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


terrified to mention it, an’ I juist ken by the wy 
he taks baud o’ me, ‘an’ comes runnirv’ back to 
tak baud o’ me again. I ken fine what he’s 
thinkin’, but I daurna speak. 

“Guid is no word for what Jamie has been to 
me, but he wasna born till after Joey died. 
When we got Jamie, Hendry took to whistlin’ 
again at the loom, an’ Jamie juist filled Joey’s 
place to him. Ay, but naebody could fill Joey’s 
place to me. It’s different to a man. A bairn’s 
no the same to him, but a fell bit o’ me was 
buried in my laddie’s grave. 

“Jamie an’ Joey was never nane the same 
nature. It was aye something in a shop, Jamie 
wanted to be, an’ he never cared muckle for his 
books, but Joey hankered after being a minister, 
young as he was, an’ a minister Hendry an’ me 
would hae done our best to mak him. Mony. 
mony a time after he came in frae the kirk on 
the Sabbath he would stand up at this very 
window and wave his hands in a reverent way, 
juist like the minister. His first text was to be 
‘ Thou God seest me.’ 

“Ye’ll wonder at me, but I’ve sat here in the 


DEAD THIS TWENTY YEARS, 


51 


lang fore-nichts dreamin’ *at Joey was a grown man 
noo, an’ ’at I was puttin’ on my bonnet to come 
to the kirk to hear him preach. Even as far 
back as twenty years an’ mair I wasna able to 
gang aboot, but Joey would say to me, ‘We’ll get 
a carriage to ye, mother, so ’at ye can come and 
hear me preach on “ Thou God seest me.” * He 
would say to me, * It doesna do, mother, for the 
minister in the pulpit to nod to ony o* the 
fowk, but I’ll gie ye a look an* ye’ll ken it’s me.’ 
Oh, Joey, I would hae gien you a look too, an’ 
ye would hae kent what I was thinkin*. He 
often said, ‘Ye’ll be proud o’ me, will ye no’ 
mother, when ye see me cornin’ sailin’ alang to 
the pulpit in my gown ? ’ So I would hae been 
proud o’ him, an’ I was proud to hear him 
speakin’ o’t. ‘ The other fowk,’ he said, ‘ will be 
sittin’ in their seats wonderin’ what my text’s 
to be, but you’ll ken, mother, an* you’ll turn up 
to “ Thou God seest me,” afore I gie oot the 
chapter.’ Ay, but that day he was coffined, for 
all the minister prayed, I found it hard to say, 
‘Thou God seest me.’ It’s the text I like best 
noo, though, an’ when Hendry an’ Leeby is at 


52 


A tVlNDOlV IN THRUMS. 


the kirk, I turn’t up often, often in the Bible. 
I read frae the begininn’ o’ the chapter, but when 
I come to ‘Thou God seest me,’ I stop. Na^ 
it’s no ’at there’s ony rebellion to the Lord in my 
heart noo, for I ken He was lookin’ doon when 
the cart gaed ower Joey, an’ He wanted to tak 
my laddie to Himsel. But juist when I come to 
‘ Thou God seest me,’ I let the Book lie in my 
lap, for aince a body’s sure o’ that they’re sure o’ 
all. Ay, ye’ll laugh, but I think, mebbe juist 
because I was his mother, ’at though Joey never 
lived to preach in a kirk, he’s preached frae 
‘Thou God seest me’ to me, I dinna ken ’at I 
would ever hae been sae sure o’ that if it hadna 
been for him, an’ so I think I see ’im sailin’ 
doon to the pulpit juist as he said he would do. 
I seen him gien me the look he spoke o’ — ay, he 
looks my wy first, an’ I ken it’s him. Naebody 
sees him but me, but I see him gien me the 
look he promised. He’s so terrible near me, 
an’ him dead, ’at when my time comes I’ll be 
rale willin’ to go. I dinna say that to Jamie, 
because he all trembles ; but I’m auld noo, an’ 
I’m no nane loth to gang.” 


DEAD THIS twenty YEAkS. 53 

Jess’s staff probably had a history before it 
became hers, for, as known to me, it was 
always old and black. If we studied them 
sufficiently we might discover that staves age 
perceptibly just as the hair turns grey. At 
the risk of being thought fanciful I dare to say 
that in inanimate objects, as in ourselves, there 
is honourable and shameful old age, and that 
to me Jess’s staff was a symbol of the good, 
the true. It rested against her in the window, 
and she was so helpless without it when on her 
feet, that to those who saw much of her it was 
part of herself. The staff was very short, nearly 
a foot having been cut, as I think she once 
told me herself, from the original, of which 
to make a porridge thieval (or stick with 
which to stir porridge), and in moving Jess 
leant heavily on it. Had she stood erect it would 
not have touched the floor. This was the staff 
that Jess shook so joyfully at her boy the forenoon 
in May when he ran out to his death. Joey^ 
however, was associated in Jess’s memory with her 
staff in less painful ways. When she spoke of 
him she took the dwarf of a staff in her hands 
and looked at it softly. 


S4 A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 

“ It’s hard to me,” she would say, “ to believe ’at 
twa an’ twenty years hae come and gone since the 
nicht Joey hod (hid) my staff. Ay, but Hendry 
was straucht in thae days by what he is noo, an’ 
Jamie wasna born. Twa an’ twenty years come 
the back end o’ the year, an’ it wasna thocht ’at I 
could live through the winter. ‘Ye’ll no last mair 
than anither month, Jess,’ was what my sister Bell 
said, when she came to see me, and yet here I am 
aye sittin’ at my window, an’ Bell’s been i’ the 
kirkyard this dozen years. 

“Xeeby was saxteen month younger than Joey, 
an’ mair quiet like. Her heart was juist set on 
helpin’ aboot the hoose, an’ though she was but 
fower year auld she could kindle the fire an’ red up 
(clean up) the room. Leeby’s been my savin’ ever 
since she was fower year auld. Ay, but it was Joey 
’at hung aboot me maist, an’ he took notice ’at I 
wasna gaen out as I used to do. Since sune after 
my marriage I’ve needed the stick, but there was 
days ’at I could gang across the road an’ sit on a 
stane. Joey kent there was something wrang 
when I had to gie that up, an’ syne he noticed 
*at I couldna even gang to the window unless 


DEAD THIS TWEHTY YEARS. 


SS 


Hendry kind o* carried me. Na, ye wouldna 
think ’at there could hae been days when Hendry 
did that, but he did. He was a sort o* ashamed 
if ony o’ the neighbours saw him so affectionate 
like, but he was terrible taen up aboot me. His 
loom was doon at T’nowhead’s Bell’s father’s, an’ 
often he cam awa up to see if I was ony better. 
He didna lat on to the other weavers ’at he was 
cornin’ to see what like I was. Na, he juist said 
he’d forgotten a pirn, or his cruizey lamp, or ony- 
thing. Ah, but he didna mak nae pretence o’ no 
carin’ for me aince he was inside the hoose. He 
came crawlin’ to the bed no to wauken me if I was 
sleepin’, an’ mony a time I made belief ’at I was, 
juist to please him. It was an awfu’ business on 
him to hae a young wife sae helpless, but he wasna 
the man to cast that at me. I mind o’ sayin’ to 
him one day in my bed, ‘Ye made a poor bargain, 
Hendry, when ye took me.’ But he says, ‘ Not one 
soul in Thrums ’ll daur say that to me but yersel, 
Jess. Na, na, my dawty, you’re the wuman o* my 
choice ; there’s juist one wuman i’ the warld to me, 
an’ that’s you, my ain Jess.’ Twa an’ twenty years 
syne. Ay, Hendry called me fond like names, thae 


56 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


no everyday names. What a straucht man he 
was ! 

“The doctor had said he could, do no more for 
me, an’ Hendry was the only ane ’at didna gie 
me up. The bairns, of course, didna understan’, 
and Joey would come into the bed an’ play on 
the top o’ me. Hendry would hae ta’en him awa, 
but I liked to hae ’im. Ye see, we was lang 
married afore we had a bairn, an’ though I couldna 
bear ony other weight on me, Joey didna hurt me, 
somehoo. I liked to hae ’im so close to me. 

“It was through that ’at he came to bury my 
staff. I couldna help often thinkin’ o’ what like 
the hoose would be when I was gone, an’ aboot 
Leeby an’ Joey left so young. So, when I could 
say it without greetin’, I said to Joey ’at I was 
goin’ far awa, an’ would he be a terrible guid 
addie to his father and Leeby when I was gone? 
He aye juist said, ‘Dinna gang, mother, dinna 
gang,’ but one day Hendry came in frae his loom, 
and says Joey, ‘Father, whaur’s my mother gaen 
to, awa frae us ? ’ I’ll never forget Hendry’s face. 
His mooth juist opened an’ shut twa or three times, 
an’ he walked quick ben to the room. I cried oot 


DEAD THIS TWENTY YEARS. 


S7 


to him to come back, but he didna come, so I sent 
Joey for him. Joey came runnin’ back to me 
sayin’, ‘Mother, mother, am awfu’ fleid (frightened), 
for my father’s greetin’ sair.’ 

“A’ thae things took a baud o’ Joey, an’ he 
ended in gien us a fleg (fright). I was sleepin’ ill 
at the time, an’ Hendry was ben sleepin’ in the 
room wi’ Leeby, Joey bein’ wi’ me. Ay, weel, 
one nicht I woke up in the dark an’ put oot my 
hand to ’im, an’ he wasna there. I sat up wi’ a 
terrible start, an’ syne I kent by the cauld ’at the 
door maun be open. I cried oot quick to Hendry, 
but he was a soond sleeper, an’ he didna hear me. 
Ay, I dinna ken hoo I did it, but I got ben to the 
room an’ shook him up. I was near daft wi’ fear 
when I saw Leeby wasna there either. Hendry 
couldna tak it in a’ at aince, but sune he had his 
trousers on, an’ he made me lie down on his bed. 
He said he wouldna move till I did it, or I wouldna 
hae dune it. As sune as he was oot o’ the hoose 
rying their names I sat up in my bed listenin’. 
Sune I heard speakin’, an’ in a minute Leeby 
womes runnin’ in to me, roarin’ an’ greetin’. She 
was barefeeted, and had juist her nichtgown on, 


58 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


an’ her teeth was chatterin’. I took her into the 
bed, but it was an hour afore she could tell me 
onything, she was in sic a state. 

“Sune after Hendry came in carryin’ Joey. 
Joey was, as naked as Leeby, and as cauld as lead, 
but he wasna greetin’. Instead o’ that he was 
awfu’ satisfied like, and for all Hendry threatened 
to lick him he wouldna tell what he an’ Leeby had 
been doin’. He says, though, says he, ‘Ye’ll no 
gang awa noo, mother ; no, ye’ll bide noo.’ My 
bonny laddie, I didna fathom him at the time. 

“ It was Leeby ’at I got it frae. Ye see, Joey 
had never seen me gaen ony gait withoot my staff, 
an’ he thocht if he hod it I wouldna be able to 
gang awa. Ay, he planned it all oot, though he 
was but a bairn, an’ lay watchin’ me in my bed till 
I fell asleep. Syne he creepit oot o’ the bed, an’ 
got the staff, and gaed ben for Leeby. She was 
fleid, but he said it was the only wy to mak me ’at 
I couldna gang awa. It was juist ower there 
whaur thae cabbages is ’at he dug the hole wi’ a 
spade, an’ buried the staff. Hendry dug it up next 
mornin’.” 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE STATEMENT OF TIBBIE BIRSE. 

On a Thursday Pete Lownie was buried, and when 
Hendry returned from the funeral Jess asked if 
Davit Lunan had been there. 

** Na,” said Hendry, who was shut up in the 
closet-bed, taking off his blacks, “ I heard tell he 
wasna bidden.” 

“Yea, yea,” said Jess, nodding to me signifi- 
cantly. “ Ay, weel,” she added, “ we’ll be hae’n 
Tibbie ower here on Saturday to deve’s (weary us) 
to death aboot it.” 

Tibbie, Davit’s wife, was sister to Marget, Pete’s 
widow, and she generally did visit Jess on Saturday 
night to talk about Marget, who was fast becoming 
one of the most fashionable persons in Thrums. 
Tibbie was hopelessly plebeian. She was none of 


6o 


A IVIN DO IV IN THRUMS. 


your proud kind, and if I entered the kitchen when 
she was there she pretended not to see me, so that, 
if I chose, I might escape without speaking to the 
like of her. I always grabbed her hand, however 
in a frank way. 

On Saturday Tibbie made her appearance 
From the rapidity of her walk, and the way she 
was sucking in her mouth, I knew that she had 
strange things to unfold. She had pinned a grey 
shawl about her shoulders, and wore a black mutch 
over her dangling grey curls. 

“ It’s you, Tibbie,” I heard Jess say, as the door 
opened. 

Tibbie did not knock, not considering herself 
grand enough for ceremony, and indeed Jess would 
have resented her knocking. On the other hand, 
when Leeby visited Tibbie, she knocked as politely 
as if she were collecting for the precentor’s present 
All this showed that we were superior socially to 
Tibbie. 

“Ay, hoo are ye, Jess ? ” Tibbie said. 

“Muckle aboot it,” answered Jess ; “juist aff an’ 
on ; ay, an* hoo hae ye been yersel ? ” 

“ Ou,” said Tibbie^ 


THE STATEMENT OF TIBBlE BIRSE, 6i 


I wish 1 could write “ ou ” as Tibbie said it. 
With her it was usually a sentence in itself. 
Sometimes it was a mere bark, again it expressed 
indignation, surprise, rapture ; it might be a check 
upon emotion or a way of leading up to it, and 
often it lasted for half a minute. In this instance 
it was, I should say, an intimation that if Jess was 
ready Tibbie would begin. 

‘‘ So Pete Lownie’s gone,** said Jess, whom I 
could not see from ben the house. I had a good 
glimpse of Tibbie, however, through the open door- 
ways. She had the armchair on the south side, as 
she would have said, of the fireplace. 

** He’s awa,” assented Tibbie, primly. 

I heard the lid of the kettle dancing, and then 
came a prolonged “ou.” Tibbie bent forward to 
whisper, and if she had anything terrible to tell I 
was glad of that, for when she whispered I heard 
her best. For a time only a murmur of words 
reached me, distant music with an “ ou ” now and 
again that fired Tibbie as the beating of his drum 
may rouse the martial spirit of a drummer. At 
last our visitor broke into an agitated whisper, and 
it was only when she stopped whispering, as she 


62 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


did now and again, that I ceased to hear her. Jess 
evidently put a question at times, but so politely 
(for she had on her best wrapper) that I did not 
catch a word. 

“Though I should be struck deid this nicht,” 
Tibbie whispered, and the sibilants hissed between 
her few remaining teeth, I wasna sae muckle as 
speired to the layin’ oot. There was Mysy Cruick- 
shanks there, an’ Kitty Wobster ’at was nae friends 
to the corpse to speak o’, but Marget passed by 
me, me ’at is her ain flesh an’ blood, though it 
mayna be for the like o’ me to say it. It’s gospel 
truth, Jess, I tell ye, when I say ’at, for all I ken 
officially, as ye micht say, Pete Lownie may be 
weel and hearty this day. If I was to meet 
Marget in the face I couldna say he was deid, 
though I ken ’at the wricht coffined him ; na, 
an’ what’s mair, I wouldna gie Marget the satisfac- 
tion o’ bearin’ me say it. No, Jess, I tell ye, I 
dinna pertend to be on an equalty wi’ Marget, but 
equalty or no equalty, a body has her feelings, an’ 
lat on ’at I ken Pete’s gone I will not. Eh ? Ou, 
weel. . , . 

“Na faags a; na, na. I ken my place better 


THE STATEMENT OF TIBBIE BIRSE. 63 

than to gang near Marget. I dinna deny ’at she’s 
grand by me, and her keeps a bakehoose o’ her 
ain, an’ glad am I to see her doin’ sae weel, but let 
me tell ye this, Jess, ‘Pride goeth before a fall.’ 
Yes, it does, it’s Scripture ; ay, it’s nae mak-up o’ 
mine, it’s Scripture. And this I will say, though 
kennin’ my place, ’at Davit Lunan is as dainty a 
man as is in Thrums, an’ there’s no one ’at’s better 
behaved at a bural, being particularly wise-like 
(presentable) in’s blacks, an’ them spleet new. Na, 
na, Jess, Davit may hae his faults an’ tak a dram 
at times like anither, but he would shame naebody 
at a bural, an’ Marget deleeberately insulted him, 
no speirin’ him to Pete’s. What’s mair, when the 
minister cried in to see me yesterday, an’ me on 
the floor washin’, says he, ‘ So Marget’s lost her 
man,’ an’ I said, ‘ Say ye so, na ? ’ for let on ’at I 
kent, and neither me at the laying oot nor Davit 
Lunan at the funeral, I would not. 

“ ‘ David should hae gone to the funeral,’ says 
the minister, ‘ for I doubt not he was only omitted 
in the invitations by a mistake.’ 

“Ay, it was weel meant, but says I, Jess, says I, 
‘ As lang as am livin’ to tak chairge o’ ’im, Davit 


64 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


Lunan gangs to nae burals ’at he’s no bidden to. 
An’ I tell ye,’ I says to the minister, ‘ if there was 
one body ’at had a richt to be at the bural o* Pete 
Lownie, it was Davit Lunan, him bein’ my man an’ 
Marget my ain sister. Yes,’ says I, though am no 
o’ the boastin’ kind, ‘ Davit had maist richt to be 
there next to Pete ’imsel. Ou, Jess. . . . 

“ This is no a maiter I like to speak aboot ; na, 
I dinna care to mention it, but the neighbours is 
nat’rally taen up aboot it, and Chirsty Tosh was 
sayin’ what I would wager ’at Marget hadna sent 
the minister to hint ’at Davit’s bein’ over-lookit in 
the invitations was juist an accident ? Losh, losh, 
Jess, to think ’at a woman could hae the michty 
assurance to mak a tool o* the very minister! Bub 
sal, as far as that gangs, Marget would do it, an’ gae 
twice to the kirk next Sabbath, too ; but if she thinks 
she’s to get ower me like that, she taks me for a 
bigger fule than I tak her for. Na, na, Marget, ye 
dinna draw my leg (deceive me). Ou, no. . . . 

“Mind ye, Jess, I hae no desire to be friends wi’ 
Marget. Naething could be farrer frae my wish 
than to hae helpit in the layin* oot o* Pete Lownie> 
an*, I assure ye, Davit wasna keen to gang to the 


THE STATEMENT OF TIBBIE BIRSE. 65 

bural. * If they dinna want me to their burals/ 
Davit says, ‘ they hae nae mair to do than to say 
sae. But I warn ye, Tibbie,* he says, * if there’s a 
bural frae this hoose, be it your bural, or be it my 
bural, not one o’ the family o’ Lownies casts their 
shadows upon the corp.’ Thae was the very words 
Davit said to me as we watched the hearse frae the 
sky-licht. Ay, he bore up wonderfu’, but he felt 
it, Jess — he felt it, as I could tell by his takkin’ to 
drink again that very nicht. Jess, Jess. . . . 

“ Marget’s getting waur an’ waur > Ay, ye may 
say so, though I’ll say naething agin her mysel. 
Of coorse am no on equalty wi’ her, especially 
since she had the bell put up in her hoose. Ou, I 
hinna seen it mysel, na, I never gang near the 
hoose, an*, as mony a body can tell ye, when I do 
hae to gang that wy I mak my feet my friend. 
Ay, but as I was sayin’, Marget’s sae grand noo ’at 
she has a bell in the hoose. As I understan’, 
there’s a rope in the wast room, an’ when ye pu’ it 
a bell rings in the east room. Weel, when Marget 
has company at their tea in the wast room, an’ 
they need mair watter or scones or onything, she 
rises an* rings the bell. Syne Jean, the auldest 
6 


66 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


lassie, gets up frae the table an’ lifts the jug or the 
plates an’ gaes avva ben to the east room for what’s 
wanted. Ay, it’s a wy o’ doin’ ’at’s juist like the 
gentry, but I’ll tell ye, Jess, Pete juist fair hated 
the soond o’ that bell, an’ there’s them ’at says it 
was the death o’ ’im. To think o’ Marget ha’en 
sic an establishment I • • • 

“Na, I hinna seen the mournin’, I’ve heard o't. 
Na, if Marget doesna tell me naething, am no the 
kind to speir naething, an’ though I’ll be at the 
kirk the morn, I winna turn my heid to look at the 
mournin’. But it’s fac as death I ken frae Janet 
McQuhatty ’at the bonnet’s a’ crape, an’ three 
yairds o* crape on the dress, the which Marget 
calls a costume. . • . Ay, 1 wouldna wonder but 
what it was hale watter the morn, for it looks 
michty like rain, an’ if it is it’ll serve Marget richt, 
an’ mebbe bring doon her pride a wee. No ’at I 
want to see her humbled, for, in coorse, she’s grand 
by the like o’ me. Ou, but . • 


CHAPTER VIII 


A CLOAK WITH BEADS, 

On weekdays the women who passed the window 
were meagrely dressed ; mothers in draggled winsey 
gowns, carrying infants that were armfuls of gran- 
deur. The Sabbath clothed every one in her best, 
and then the women went by with their hands spread 
out When I was with Hendry cloaks with beads 
were the fashion, and Jess sighed as she looked at 
them. They were known in Thrums as the Eleven 
and a Bits (threepenny bits), that being their price 
at Kyowowy’s in the square. Kyowowy means 
finicky, and applied to the draper by general 
consent. No doubt it was very characteristic to call 
the cloaks by their market value. In the glen my 
scholars still talk of their school-books as the 
tupenny, the fowerpenny, the saxpenny. They 
finish their education with the tenpenny. 


68 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


Jess’s opportunity for handling the garments 
that others of her sex could finger in shops was when 
she had guests to tea. Persons who merely dropped 
in and remained to tea got their meal, as a rule, in 
the kitchen. They had nothing on that Jess could 
not easily take in as she talked to them. But 
when they came by special invitation, the meal was 
served in the room, the guests* things being left 
on the kitchen bed. Jess not being able to go 
ben the house, had to be left with the things. 
When the time to go arrived, these were found on 
the bed, just as they had been placed there, but Jess 
could now tell Leeby whether they were imitation, 
why Bell Elshioner’s feather went far round the 
bonnet, and Chirsty Lownie’s reason for always 
holding her left arm fast against her side when 
she went abroad in the black jacket. Ever since 
My Hobart’s eleven and a bit was left on the 
kitchen bed Jess had hungered for a cloak with 
beads. My’s was the very marrows of the one 
T’nowhead’s wife got in Dundee for ten-and- 
sixpence ; indeed, we would have thought that 
’Lisbeth’s also came from Kyowowy’s had not 
Sanders Elshioner’s sister seen her go into the 


A CLOAK WITH BEADS. 


69 


Dundee shop with T*nowhead (who was loth), 
and hun? about to discover what she was 
after. 

Hendry was not quick at reading faces like 
Tam mas Haggart, but the wistful look on Jess’s 
face when there was talk of eleven and a bits had 
its meaning for him. 

“ They’re grand to look at, no doubt,” I have 
heard him say to Jess, “but they’re richt annoyin’. 
That new wife o’ Peter Dickie’s had ane on in the 
kirk last Sabbath, an’ wi’ her sittin’ juist afore us 
I couldna listen to the sermon for tryin’ to count 
the beads.” 

Hendry made his way into these gossips un- 
invited, for his opinions on dress were considered 
contemptible, though he was worth consulting on 
material. Jess and Leeby discussed many things 
in his presence, confident that his ears were not 
doing their work ; but every now and then it was 
discovered that he had been hearkening greedily. 
If the subject was dress, he might then become a 
little irritating. 

“Oh, they’re grand,” Jess admitted; “they set 
a body aff oncommon.” 


70 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


“ They would be no use to you,” said Hendry, 
“ for ye canna wear them except ootside.’^ 

“ A body doesna buy cloaks to be wearin* at 
them steady,” retorted Jess. 

“ No, no, but you could never wear yours though 
ye had ane.” 

“ I dinna want ane. They’re far ower grand for 
the like o’ me.” 

“ They’re no nae sic thing. Am thinkin’ ye’re 
juist as fit to wear an eleven and a bit as My 
Hobart.” 

“ Weel, mebbe I am, but it’s oot o’ the queistion 
gettin’ ane, they’re sic a price.” 

“Ay, an’ though we had the siller, it would 
surely be an awfu’ like thing to buy a cloak ’at ye 
could never wear ? ” 

“ Ou, but I dinna want ane.” 

Jess spoke so mournfully that Hendry became 
enraged. 

“ It’s most michty,” he said, “ *at ye would gang 
an’ set yer heart on sic a completely useless 
thing.” 

“ I hinna set my heart on’t.” 

“Dinna blether. Ye’ve been speakin* aboot 


A CLOAK WITH BEADS, 


71 


thae eleven and a bits to Leeby, aff an* on, for 
twa month.’* 

Then Hendry hobbled off to his loom, and Jess 
gave me a look which meant that men are trying 
at the best, once you are tied to them. 

The cloaks continued to turn up in conversation, 
and Hendry poured scorn upon Jess’s weakness, 
telling her she would be better employed mending 
his trousers than brooding over an eleven and a 
bit that would have to spend its life in a drawer. 
An outsider would have thought that Hendry was 
positively cruel to Jess. He seemed to take a 
delight in finding that she had neglected to sew a 
button on his waistcoat. His real joy, however, 
was the knowledge that she sewed as no other 
woman in Thrums could sew. Jess had a genius 
for making new garments out of old ones, and 
Hendry never tired of gloating over her cleverness 
so long as she was not present. He was always 
athirst for fresh proofs of it, and these were forth- 
coming every day. Sparing were his words of 
praise to herself, but in the evening he generally 
had a smoke with me in the attic, and then the 
thought of Jess made him chuckle till his pipe 


72 


A WJNDOIV IN THRUMS, 


went out. When he smoked he grunted as if in 
pain, though this really added to the enjoyment. 

“ It doesna matter,” he would say to me, “ what 
Jess turns her hand to, she can mak ony mortal 
thing. She doesna need nae teachin’; na, juist gie 
her a guid look at onything, be it clothes, or furni- 
ture, or in the bakin’ line, it’s all the same to her. 
She’ll mak another exactly like it. Ye canna 
beat her. Her bannocks is so superior ’at a 
Tilliedrum woman took to her bed after tastin’ 
them, an’ when the lawyer has company his wife 
gets Jess to mak some bannocks for her an’ syne 
pretends they’re her ain bakin’. Ay, there’s a 
story aboot that. One day the auld doctor, him 
’at’s deid, was at his tea at the lawyer’s, an’ says 
the guidwife, ‘ Try the cakes, Mr. Riach ; they’re 
my own bakin’.’ Weel, he was a fearsomely out- 
spoken man, the doctor, an’ nae suner had he the 
bannock atween his teeth, for he didna stop to 
swallow’t, than he says, ‘ Mistress Geddie,’ says he, 
‘ I wasna born on a Sabbath. Na, na, you’re no 
the first grand leddy ’at has gien me bannocks as 
their ain bakin’ ’at was baked and fired by Jess 
Logan, her ’at’s Hendry McQumpha’s wife.’ Ay, 


A cloak with beads. 


73 


they say the lawyer’s wife didna ken which wy to 
look, she was that mortified. It’s juist the same 
wi’ sewin’. There’s wys o’ ornamentin’ christenin’ 
robes an’ the like ’at’s kent to naebody but hersel ; 
an’ as for stockin’s, weel, though I’ve seen her 
mak sae mony, she amazes me yet. I mind o’ a 
furry waistcoat I aince had. Weel, when it was 
fell dune, do you think she gae it awa to some 
gaen aboot body (vagrant) } Na, she made it into 
a richt neat coat to Jamie, wha was a bit laddie at 
the time. When he grew out o’ it, she made a 
slipbody o’t for hersel. Ay, I dinna ken a* the 
different things it became, but the last time I saw 
it was ben in the room, whaur she’d covered a 
footstool wi’ ’t. Yes, Jess is the cleverest crittur I 
ever saw. Leeby’s handy, but she’s no a patch on 
her mother.” 

I sometimes repeated these panegyrics to 
Jess. She merely smiled, and said that men 
haver most terrible when they are not at their 
work. 

Hendry tried Jess sorely over the cloaks, and a 
time came when, only by exasperating her, could 
he get her to reply to his sallies. 


74 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


** Wha wants an eleven an* a bit ? ” she retorted 
now and again. 

** It’s you ’at wants it,” said Hendry, promptly. 

** Did I ever say I wanted ane ? What use 
could I hae for’t ? ” 

“That’s the queistion,” said Hendry. “Ye 
canna gang the length o’ the door, so ye would 
never be able to wear’t.” 

“Ay, weel,” replied Jess, “I’ll never hae the 
chance o’ no bein’ able to wear’t, for, hooever 
muckle I wanted it, I couldna get it.” 

Jess’s infatuation had in time the effect of 
making Hendry uncomfortable. In the attic he 
delivered himself of such sentiments as these ; 

“There’s nae understandin’ a woman. There’s 
Jess ’at hasna her equal for cleverness in Thrums, 
man or woman, an’ yet she’s fair skeered about 
thae cloaks. Aince a woman sets her mind on 
something to wear, she’s mair onreasonable than 
the stupidest man. Ay, it micht mak them 
humble to see hoo foolish they are syne. No, but 
it doesna do’t. 

“ If it was a thing to be useful noo, I wouldna 
think the same o’t, but she could never wear’t She 


A CLOAK WITH BEADS. 


75 


kens she could never wear’t, an’ yet she’s juist as 
keen to hae’t. 

“ I dinna like to see her so wantin’ a thing, an’ 
no able to get it. But it’s an awfu’ sum, eleven 
an’ a bit.” 

He tried to argue with her further. 

" If ye had eleven an’ a bit to fling awa,’* he 
said, “ ye dinna mean to tell me ’at ye would buy 
a cloak instead o’ cloth for a gown, or flannel for 
petticoats, or some useful thing ? ” 

**As sure as death,” said Jess, with unwonted 
vehemence, " if a cloak I could get, a cloak I would 
buy.” 

Hendry came up to tell me what Jess had 
said. 

“ It’s a michty infatooation,” he said, “ but it 
shows hoo her heart’s set on thae cloaks.” 

“Aince ye had it,” he argued with her, “ye 
would juist hae to lock it awa in the drawers. Ye 
would never even be seein* ’t.” 

“Ay, would I,” said Jess. “I would often tak 
it oot an’ look at it. Ay, an’ I would aye ken it 
was there.” 

“ But naebody would ken ye had it but yersel,” 


76 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


said Hendry, who had a vague notion that this 
was a telling objection. 

“Would they no?** answered Jess. “It would 
be a’ through the toon afore nicht” 

“ Weel, all I can say,” said Hendry, “ is ’at ye’re 
terrible foolish to tak the want o’ sic a useless 
thing to heart.” 

“Am no takkin* *t to heart,” retorted Jess, as 
usual. 

Jess needed many things in her days that 
poverty kept from her to the end, and the cloak 
was merely a luxury. She would soon have let it 
slip by as something unattainable had not Hendry 
encouraged it to rankle in her mind. I cannot 
say when he first determined that Jess should 
have a cloak, come the me ney as it liked, for he 
was too ashamed of his weakness to admit his 
project to me. I remember, however, his saying 
to Jess one day : 

“ I’ll warrant ye could mak a cloak yersel the 
marrows o’ thae eleven and a bits, at half the 
price ? ” 

“It would cost,” said Jess, “sax an* saxpence, 
exactly. The cloth would be five shillins, an’ the 


A CLOAK WITH BEADS, 


77 


beads a shillin’. I have some braid ’at would do 
fine for the front, but the buttons would be sax- 
pence.” 

“ Ye’re sure o’ that ? ” 

“ I ken fine, for I got Leeby to price the things 
in the shop.” 

“ Ay, but it maun be ill to shape the cloaks richt. 
There was a queer cut aboot that ane Peter Dickie’s 
new wife had on.” 

“ Queer cut or no queer cut,” said Jess, “ I took 
the shape o’ My Hobart’s ane the day she was 
here at her tea, an’ I could mak the identical o’t 
for sax and sax.” 

“ I dinna believe’t,” said Hendry, but when he 
and I were alone he told me, “ There’s no a doubt 
she could mak it. Ye heard her say she had ta’en 
the shape ? Ay, that shows she’s rale set on a 
cloak.” 

Had Jess known that Hendry had been saving 
up for months to buy her material for a cloak, she 
would not have let him do it. She could not 
know, however, for all the time he was scraping 
together his pence, he kept up a ring-ding-dang 
about her folly. Hendry gave Jess all the 


78 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


wages he weaved, except threepence weekly, most 
of which went in tobacco and snuff. The dulse- 
man had perhaps a halfpenny from him in the 
fortnight. I noticed that for a long time Hendry 
neither smoked nor snuffed, and I knew that for 
years he had carried a shilling in his snuff-mull. 
The remainder of the money he must have made 
by extra work at his loom, by working harder, for 
he could scarcely have worked longer. 

It was one day shortly before Jamie’s return 
to Thrums that Jess saw Hendry pass the house 
and go down the brae when he ought to have come 
in to his brose. She sat at the window watching 
for him, and by and by he reappeared, carrying a 
parcel. 

“ Whaur on earth hae ye been ? ’* she asked, 
“ an’ what’s that you’re carry in’ ? ” 

** Did ye think it was an eleven an’ a bit ? 
said Hendry. 

“No, I didna,” answered Jess, indignantly. 

Then Hendry slowly undid the knots of the 
string with which the parcel was tied. He took 
off the brown paper. 

• There’s yer cloth,” he said, ** an’ here’s one an’ 
saxpence for the beads an’ the buttons.” 


A CLOAK WITH BEADS, 


79 


While Jess still stared he followed me ben the 
house. 

“ It’s a terrible haver,” he said, apologetically, 
but she had set her heart on’t.” 


CHAPTER IX, 


THE POWER OF BEAUTY. 

One evening there was such a gathering at the 
pig-sty that Hendry and I could not get a board 
to lay our backs against. Circumstances had 
pushed Pete Elshioner into the place of honour 
that belonged by right of mental powers to 
Tammas Haggart, and Tammas was sitting rather 
sullenly on the bucket, boring a hole in the pig 
with his sarcastic eye. Pete was passing round a 
card, and in time it reached me. "With Mr. 
and Mrs. David Alexander’s compliments,” was 
printed on it, and Pete leered triumphantly at us as 
it went the round. 

"Weel, what think ye?” he asked, with a 
pretence at modesty. 

“Ou,” said T’nowhead, looking at the others 


THE POWER OF BEAUTY. 


8i 


like one who asked a question, “ ou, I think ; ay, 
ay.” 

The others seemed to agree with him, all but 
Tam mas, who did not care to tie himself down to 
an opinion. 

Ou ay,” T’nowhead continued, more confidently, 
“ it is so, deceededly.” 

“Ye’ll no ken,” said Pete, chuckling, “what it 
means ? ’* 

“Na,” the farmer admitted, “ na, I canna say I 
exac’ly ken that.” 

“ I ken, though,” said Tammas, in his keen way. 

“ Weel, then, what is’t ? ” demanded Pete, who 
had never properly come under Tammas’s spell. 

“ I ken,” said Tammas. 

“ Oot wi’t then.” 

“ I dinna say it’s lyin’ on my tongue,” Tammas 
replied, in a tone of reproof, “but if ye’ll juist 
speak awa aboot some other thing for a meenute 
or twa, I’ll tell ye syne.” 

Hendry said that this was only reasonable, but 
we could think of no subject at the moment, so 
we only stared at Tammas, and waited. 

“ I fathomed it,” he said at last, “ as sune as my 

7 


82 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


een lichted on’t. It’s one o’ the bit cards ’at grand 
fowk slip ’aneath doors when they mak calls, an’ 
their friends is no in. Ay, that’s what it is.” 

" I dinna say ye’re wrang,” Pete answered, a 
little annoyed. “ Ay, weel, lads, of course David 
Alexander’s oor Dite as we called ’im, Dite 
Elshioner, an’ that’s his wy o’ signifyin’ to us ’at 
he’s married.” 

** I assure ye,” said Hendry, “ Dite’s doin’ the 
thing in style.” 

“ Ay, we said that when the card arrived,” Pete 
admitted. 

“ I kent,” said Tammas, *‘’at that was the wy 
grand fowk did when they got married. I’ve 
kent it a lang time. It’s no nae surprise to 
me.” 

“He’s been lang in marryin’,” Hookey Crewe 
said. 

“He was thirty at Martinmas,” said Pete. 

“Thirty, was he?” said Hookey. “Man, I’d 
buried twa wives by the time I was that age, an’ 
was castin’ aboot for a third.” 

“ I mind o’ them,” Henry interposed. 

“ Ay,” Hookey said, “ the first twa was angels.” 


THE POWER OF BEAUTY, 83 

There he paused. “An* so*s the third,** he added, 
** in many respects.** 

“ But wha*s the woman Dite*s ta*en ? ** T*now- 
head or some one of the more silent members of 
the company asked of Pete. 

“ Ou, we dinna ken wha she is,** answered Pete ; 
“but she*ll be some Glasca lassie, for he*s there 
noo. Look, lads, look at this. He sent this at 
the same time ; it*s her picture.** Pete pro- 
duced the silhouette of a young lady, and handed 
it round. 

“ What do ye think ? ** he asked. 

“ I assure ye I ** said Hookey. 

“ Sal,’* said Hendry, even more charmed, “ Bite’s 
done weel.” 

“ Lat’s see her in a better licht,” said Tammas. 

He stood up and examined the photograph 
narrowly, while Pete fidgeted with his legs. 

“Fairish,” said Tammas at last. “Ou, ay; no 
what I would selec’ mysel, but a dainty bit stocky ! 
Ou, a tasty crittury! ay, an* she’s weel in order. 
Lads, she’s a fine stoot kimmer.** 

“I conseeder her a beauty,” said Pete, aggres- 
sively. 


84 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


“ She’s a’ that,” said Hendry. 

“ A’ I can say,” said Hookey, ** is ’at she taks me 
most michty.” 

‘‘ She’s no a beauty,” Tammas maintained ; “ na, 
she doesna juist come up to that ; but I dinna 
deny but what she’s weel faured.” 

“What faut do ye find wi’ her, Tammas?” 
asked Hendry. 

“ Conseedered critically,” said Tammas, holding 
the photograph at arm’s length, “ I would say 'at 
she — let’s see noo ; ay, I would say ’at she’s 
defeecient in genteelity.” 

“ Havers,” said Pete. 

“ Na,” said Tammas, “no when conseedered 
critically. Ye see she’s drawn lauchin’ ; an* the 
genteel thing’s no to lauch, but juist to put on 
a bit smirk. Ay, that’s the genteel thing.” 

“ A smile, they ca’ it,” interposed T’nowhead. 

“ I said a smile,” continued Tammas. “ Then 
there’s her waist I say naething agin her waist, 
speakin’ in the ord’nar meanin’ ; but, conseedered 
critically, there’s a want o’ suppleness, as ye micht 
say, aboot it. Ay, it doesna compare wi’ the 
waist o’ ” (Here Tammas mentioned a young 


THE POWER OF BEAUTY, 85 

iady who had recently married into a local county 
Tamily.) 

“ That was a pretty tiddy,” said Hookey. “ Ou, 
losh, ay I it made me a kind o’ queery to look at 
her.” 

** Ye*re ower kyow-owy (particular), Tammas,” 
said Pete. 

“I may be, Pete,” Tammas admitted; "but I 
maun say I’m fond o’ a bonny-looken wuman, an’ 
no aisy to please : na, I’m nat’rally ane o’ the 
critical kind.” 

" It’s extror’nar,” said T’nowhead, “ what a 
poo’er beauty has. I mind when I was a callant 
readin’ aboot Mary Queen o’ Scots till I was fair 
mad, lads ; yes, I was fair mad at her bein’ deid. 
Ou, I could hardly sleep at nichts for thinking o’ 
her.” 

" Mary was spunky as weel as a beauty,” said 
Hookey, " an’ that’s the kind I like. Lads, what a 
persuasive tid she was ! ” 

"She got roond the men,” said Hendry, "ay, 
she turned them roond her finger. That’s the 
warst o’ thae beauties.” 

** I dinna gainsay,” said T’nowhead, " but what 


86 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


there was a little o’ the deevil in Mary, the 
crittur.” 

Here T’nowhead chuckled, and then looked 
scared 

" What Mary needed,” said Tammas, “ was a 
strong man to manage her.” 

" Ay, man, but it’s ill to manage thae beauties. 
They gie ye a glint their een, an’ syne whaur are 
ye?” 

“Ah, they can be managed,” said Tammas, 
complacently. “ There’s naebody nat’rally safter 
wi’ a pretty stocky o’ a bit wumany than mysel ; 
but for a’ that, if I had been Mary’s man I would 
hae stood nane o’ her tantrums. * Na, Mary, my 
lass,’ I would hae said, ‘ this winna do ; na, na, 
ye’re a bonny body, but ye maun mind ’at man’s 
the superior ; ay, man’s the lord o’ creation, an’ so 
ye maun juist sing sma’.’ That’s hoo I would hae 
managed Mary, the speerity crittur ’at she was.” 

“Ye would hae haen yer wark cut oot for ye, 
Tammas.” 

“ Ilka mornin’,” pursued Tammas, “ I would hae 
said to her, ‘Mary,’ I would hae said, ‘wha’s to 
wear thae breeks the day, you or me ?* Ay, syne 


THE POWER OF BEAUTY. 


87 


I would hae ordered her to kindle the fire, or if I 
had been the king, of coorse I would hae telt her 
instead to ring the bell an’ hae the cloth laid for the 
breakfast. Ay, that’s the wy to mak the like o’ 
Mary respec ye.” 

Pete and I left them talking. He had written a 
letter to David Alexander, and wanted me to 
" back ” it. 


CHAPTER X, 


A MAGNUM OPUS. 

Two Bibles, a volume of sermons by the learned 
Dr, Isaac Barrow, a few numbers of the Cheap 
Magazine, that had strayed from Dunfermline, and 
a “ Pilgrim’s Progress,” were the works that lay 
conspicuous ben in the room. Hendry had also 
a copy of Burns, whom he always quoted in the 
complete poem, and a collection of legends in 
song and prose, that Leeby kept out of sight in a 
drawer. 

The weight of my box of books was a subject 
Hendry was very willing to shake his head over, 
but he never showed any desire to take off the lid. 
Jess, however, was more curious ; indeed, she would 
have been an omnivorous devourer of books had it 
not been for her conviction that reading was idling. 


A MAGNUM OPUS, 89 

Until I found her out she never allowed to me that 
Leeby brought her my books one at a time. Some 
of them were novels, and Jess took about ten 
minutes to each. She confessed that what she 
read was only the last chapter, owing to a con- 
suming curiosity to know whether “she got him.” 

She read all the London part, however, of “ The 
Heart of Midlothian,” because London was where 
Jamie lived, and she and I had a discussion about 
it which ended in her remembering that Thrums 
once had an author of its own. 

“ Bring oot the book,” she said to Leeby, “ it was 
put awa i’ the bottom drawer ben i’ the room sax 
year syne, an’ I sepad it’s there yet.” 

Leeby came but with a faded little book, the 
title already rubbed from its shabby brown 
covers. I opened it, and then all at once I saw 
before me again the man who wrote and printed it 
and died. He came hobbling up the brae, so bent 
that his body was almost at right angles to his 
legs, and his broken silk hat was carefully brushed 
as in the days when Janet, his sister, lived. There 
he stood at the top of the brae, panting. 

I was but a boy when Jimsy Duthie turned the 


90 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


corner of the brae for the last time, with a score of 
mourners behind him. While I knew him there was 
no Janet to run to the door to see if he was coming. 
So occupied was Jimsy with the great affair of his 
life, which was brewing for thirty years, that his 
neighbours saw how he missed his sister better 
than he realized it himself Only his hat was no 
longer carefully brushed, and his coat hung awry, 
and there was sometimes little reason why he 
should go home to dinner. It is for the sake of 
Janet who adored him that we should remember 
Jimsy in the days before she died. 

Jimsy was a poet, and for the space of thirty 
years he lived in a great epic on the Millennium. 
This is the book presented to me by Jess, that 
lies so quietly on my topmost shelf now. Open it, 
however, and you will find that the work is entitled 
“The Millennium : an Epic Poem, in Twelve Books : 
by James Duthie.” In the little hole in his wall 
where Jimsy kept his books there was, I have no 
doubt — for his effects were rouped before I knew 
him except by name — a well-read copy of “ Para- 
dise Lost.’" Some people would smile, perhaps, if 
they read the two epics side by side, and others 


A MAGNUM OPUS. 


9 * 


might sigh, for there is a great deal in “The 
Millennium ” that Milton could take credit for. 
Jimsy had educated himself, after the idea of 
writing something that the world would not 
willingly let die came to him, and he began his 
book before his education was complete. So far 
as I know, he never wrote a line that had not 
to do with “ The Millennium.” He was ever a 
man sparing of his plural tenses, and “ The 
Millennium ” says “ has ” for “ have ” ; a vain word, 
indeed, which Thrums would only have permitted 
as a poetical licence. The one original character 
in the poem is the devil, of whom J irnsy gives a 
picture that is startling and graphic, and received 
the approval of the Auld Licht minister. 

By trade Jimsy was a printer, a master-printer 
with no one under him, and he printed and bound 
his book, ten copies in all, as well as wrote it To 
print the poem took him, I dare say, nearly as long 
as to write it, and he set up the pages as they were 
written, one by one. The book is only printed on 
one side of the leaf, and each page was produced 
separately like a little hand-bill. Those who may 
pick up the book — but who will care to do so ?— 


92 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


will think that the author or his printer could not 
spell — but they would not do Jimsy that injustice 
if they knew the circumstances in which it was 
produced. He had but a small stock of type, and 
on many occasions he ran out of a letter. The 
letter e tried him sorely. Those who knew him 
best say that he tried to think of words without 
an e in them, but when he was baffled he had to 
use a little a or an instead. He could print 
correctly, but in the book there are a good many 
capital letters in the middle of words, and some- 
times there is a note of interrogation after alas ” 
or “Woes me,” because all the notes of exclama- 
tion had been used up. 

Jimsy never cared to speak about his great poem 
even to his closest friends, but Janet told how he 
read it out to her, and that his whole body 
trembled with excitement while he raised his eyes 
to heaven as if asking for inspiration that would 
enable his voice to do justice to his writing. So 
grand it was, said Janet, that her stocking would 
slip from her fingers as he read — and Janet’s 
stockings, that she was always knitting when not 
otherwise engaged, did riot slip from her hands 


A MAGNUM OPUS. 


93 


readily. After her death he was heard by his 
neighbours reciting the poem to himself, generally 
with his door locked. He is said to have de- 
claimed part of it one still evening from the top 
of the commonty like one addressing a multitude, 
and the idlers who had crept up to jeer at him fell 
back when they saw his face. He walked through 
them, they told, with his old body straight once 
more, and a queer light playing on his face. His 
lips are moving as I see him turning the corner of 
the brae. So he passed from youth to old age, and 
all his life seemed a dream, except that part of it 
in which he was writing, or printing, or stitching, or 
binding “ The Millennium.*’ At last the work was 
completed. 

“ It is finished,” he printed at the end of the 
last book. “ The task of thirty years is over.” 

It is indeed over. No one ever read ** The 
Millennium.” I am not going to sentimentalize 
over my copy, for how much of it have I read ? 
But neither shall I say that it was written to no 
end. 

You may care to know the last of Jimsy, though 
in one sense he was blotted out when the last copy 


94 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


was bound. He had saved one hundred pounds 
by that time, and being now neither able to work 
nor to live alone, his friends cast about for a home 
for his remaining years. He was very spent and 
feeble, yet he had the fear that he might be still 
alive when all his money was gone. After that 
was the workhouse. He covered sheets of paper 
with calculations about how long the hundred 
pounds would last if he gave away for board and 
lodgings ten shillings, nine shillings, seven and 
sixpence a week. At last, with sore misgivings, 
he went to live with a family who took him for 
eight shillings. Less than a month afterwards he 
died. 


CHAPTER XI 


THE GHOST CRADLE. 

Our dinner-hour was twelve o^clock, and Hendry, 
for a not incomprehensible reason, called this meal 
his brose. Frequently, however, while I was there 
to share the expense, broth was put on the table, 
with beef to follow in clean plates, much to 
Hendry’s distress, for the comfortable and usual 
practice was to eat the beef from the broth-plates. 
Jess, however, having three whole white plates and 
two cracked ones, insisted on the meals being taken 
genteelly, and her husband, with a look at me, gave 
way. 

“ Half a pound o’ boiling beef, an’ a penny 
bone,” was Leeby’s almost invariable order when 
she dealt with the flesher, and Jess had always 
neighbours poorer than herself who got a plate- 
ful of the broth. She never had anything without 


96 


A mNDOlV IN THRUMS, 


remembering some old body who would be the 
better of a little of it. 

Among those who must have missed Jess sadly 
after she was gone was Johnny Proctor, a half- 
witted man who, because he could not work, 
remained straight at a time of life when most 
weavers, male and female, had lost some inches of 
their stature. For as far back as my memory goes, 
Johnny had got his brose three times a week from 
Jess, his custom being to walk in without ceremony, 
and, drawing a stool to the table, tell Leeby that he 
was now ready. One day, however, when I was in 
the garden putting some rings on a fishing-wand, 
Johnny pushed by me, with no sign of recognition 
on his face. I addressed him, and, after pausing 
undecidedly, he ignored me. When he came to 
the door, instead of flinging it open and walking 
in, he knocked primly, which surprised me so much 
that I followed him. 

“ Is this whaur Mistress McQumpha lives he 
asked, when Leeby, with a face ready to receive 
the minister himself, came at length to the door. 

I knew that the gentility of the knock had 
taken both her and her mother aback. 


thk ghost cradle. 




“Hoots, Johnny,” said Leeby, “what haver’s 
this? Come awa in.” 

Johnny seemed annoyed. 

“Is this whaur Mistress McQumpha lives?” he 
repeated. 

“Say ’at it is,” cried Jess, who was quicker in 
the uptake than her daughter. 

“ Of course this is whaur Mistress McQumpha 
lives,” Leeby then said, “as weel ye ken, for ye 
had yer dinner here no twa hours syne.” 

“Then,” said Johnny, “Mistress Tully’s com- 
pliments to her, and would she kindly lend the 
christenin’ robe, an’ also the tea-tray, if the same 
be na needed ? ” 

Having delivered his message as instructed, 
Johnny consented to sit down until the famous 
christening robe and the tray were ready, but he 
would not talk, for that was not in the bond. 
Jess’s sweet face beamed over the compliment 
Mrs. Tully, known on ordinary occasions as Jean 
McTaggart, had paid her, and, after Johnny had 
departed laden, she told me how the tray, which 
had a great bump in the middle, came into her 
possession. 


8 


98 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


“Ye’ve often heard me speak aboot the time 
when I was a lassie workin’ at the farm o* the 
Hog? Ay, that was afore me an’ Hendry kent 
ane anither, an’ I was as fleet on my feet in thae 
days as Leeby is noo. It was Sam’l Fletcher ’at 
was the farmer, but he maun hae been gone afore 
you was mair than born. Mebbe, though, ye ken 
’at he was a terrible invalid, an* for the hinmost 
years o’ his life he sat in a muckle chair nicht an’ 
day. Ay, when I took his denner to ’im, on that 
very tray ’at Johnny cam for, I little thocht ’at by 
an’ by I would be sae keepit in a chair mysel. 

“ But the thinkin’ o’ Sam’l Fletcher’s case is ane 
o’ the things ’at maks me awfu’ thankfu’ for the 
lenient wy the Lord has aye dealt wi’ me ; for 
Sam’l couldna move oot o’ the chair, aye sleepin’ 
in’t at nicht, an’ I can come an’ gang between mine 
an’ my bed. Mebbe, ye think I’m no much better 
off than Sam’l, but that’s a terrible mistak. 
What a glory it would hae been to him if he 
could hae gone frae one end o’ the kitchen to the 
ither. Ay, I’m sure o’ that. 

“Sam’l was rale weel liked, for he was saft- 
spoken to everybody, an’ fond o’ ha’en a gossip 


THE GHOST CRADLE, 


99 


wi’ ony ane ’at was aboot the farm. We didna 
care sae muckle for the wife, Eppie Lownie, for 
she managed the farm, an’ she was fell hard an’ 
terrible reserved we thocht, no even likin’ ony 
body to get friendly wi’ the mester, as we called 
Sam’l. Ay, we made a richt mistak.” 

As I had heard frequently of this queer, mourn- 
ful mistake made by those who considered Sam’l 
unfortunate in his wife, I turned Jess on to the 
main line of her story. 

It was the ghost cradle, as they named it, ’at I 
meant to tell ye aboot. The Bog was a bigger 
farm in thae days than noo, but I daursay it has 
the new steadin’ yet. Ay, it winna be new noo, 
but at the time there was sic a commotion aboot 
the ghost cradle, they were juist puttin’ the new 
steadin’ up. There was sax or mair masons at it, 
wi’ the lads on the farm helpin’, an’ as they were 
all sleepin’ at the farm, there was great stir aboot 
the place. I couldna tell ye hoo the story aboot 
the farm’s bein’ haunted rose, to begin wi’, but I 
mind fine hoo fleid I was ; ay, an’ no only me, but 
every man- body an’ woman -body on the farm. It 
was aye late ’at the soond began, an’ we never saw 


lOO 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


naething, we juist heard it. The masons said they 
wouldna hae been sae fleid if they could hae seen’t, 
but it never was seen. It had the soond o* a 
cradle rockin’, an’ when we lay in our beds heark- 
enin’, it grew louder an’ louder till it wasna to be 
borne, an’ the women-folk fair skirled wi’ fear. The 
mester was intimate wi’ a’ the stories aboot ghosts 
an’ water-kelpies an’ sic like, an’ we couldna help 
listenin’ to them. But he aye said ’at ghosts ’at 
was juist heard an’ no seen was the maist fearsome 
an’ wicked. For all there was sic fear ower the 
hale farm-toon ’at naebody would gang ower the 
door alane after the gloamin’ cam, the mester said 
he wasna fleid to sleep i’ the kitchen by ’imsel. 
We thocht it richt brave o’ ’im, for ye see he was 
as helpless as a bairn. 

“ Richt queer stories rose aboot the cradle, an’ 
travelled to the ither farms. The wife didna like 
them ava, for it was said ’at there maun hae been 
some awful murder o’ an infant on the farm, or we 
wouldna be haunted by a cradle, Syne folk began 
to mind ’at there had been nae bairns born on the 
farm as far back as onybody kent, an’ it was said 
’at some lang syne crime had made the bog cursed. 


THE GHOST CRADLE, 


lOI 


“ Dinna think *at we juist lay in our beds or sat 
round the fire shakkin’ wi’ fear. Everything ’at 
could be dune was dune. In the daytime, when 
naething was heard, the masons explored a 
place i’ the farm, in the hope o* findin’ oot ’at the 
sound was caused by sic a thing as the wind playin’ 
on the wood in the garret. Even at nichts, when 
they couldna sleep wi’ the soond. I’ve kent them 
rise in a body an’ gang all ower the house wi* 
lichts. I’ve seen them climbin’ on the new 
steadin’, crawlin’ alang the rafters handin’ their 
cruizey lamps afore them, an’ us women-bodies 
shiverin’ wi’ fear at the door. It was on ane o’ 
thae nichts ’at a mason fell off the rafters an’ 
broke his leg. Weel, sic a state was the men in to 
find oot what it was ’at was terrifyin’ them sae 
muckle, ’at the rest o’ them climbed up at aince to 
the place he’d fallen frae, thinkin’ there was some- 
thing there ’at had fleid ’im. But though they 
crawled back an’ forrit there was naething ava. 

" The rockin’ was louder, we thocht, after that 
nicht, an’ syne the men said it would go on till 
somebody was killed. That idea took a richt 
baud o’ them, an’ twa ran awa back to Tilliedrum, 


102 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


whaur they had come frae. They gaed thegithet 
i’ the middle o* the nicht, an’ it was thocht next 
mornin* ’at the ghost had spirited them awa. 

“Ye couldna conceive hoo low-spirited we all 
were after the masons had gien up hope o’ findin’ 
a nat’ral cause for the soond. At ord’nar times 
there’s no ony mair lichtsome place than a farm 
after the men hae come in to their supper, but at 
the Bog we sat dour an’ sullen ; an’ there wasna a 
mason or a farm-servant ’at would gang by ’imsel 
as far as the end o’ the hoose whaur the peats was 
keepit. The mistress maun hae saved some siller 
that spring through the Egyptians (gypsies) keepin’ 
awa, for the farm had got sic an ill name, ’at nae 
tinkler would come near’t at nicht. The tailor- 
man an’ his laddie, ’at should hae bidden wi’ us 
to sew things for the men, walkit off fair skeered 
one mornin’, an’ settled doon at the farm o’ Cragie- 
buckle fower mile awa, whaur our lads had to gae 
to them. Ay, I mind the tailor’s sendin’ the laddie 
for the money owin’ him ; he hadna the speerit to 
venture again within soond o’ the cradle ’imsel. 
The men on the farm, though, couldna blame ’im 
for that. They were juist as flichtered themsels. 


THE GHOST CRADLE, 


J03 

an* mony a time I saw them hittin* the dogs for 
whinin’ at the soond. The wy the dogs took on 
was fearsome in itsel, for they seemed to ken, aye 
when nicht cam on, ’at the rockin’ would sune 
begin, an* if they werena chained they cam runnin’ 
to the hoose. I hae heard the hale glen fu, as ye 
micht say, wi’ the whinin’ o* dogs, for the dogs on 
the other farms took up the cry, an’ in a glen ye 
can hear soonds terrible far awa at nicht 

“ As lang as we sat i’ the kitchen, listenin’ to 
what the mester had to say aboot the ghosts in his 
young days, the cradle would be still, but we were 
nae suner awa speeritless to our beds than it began, 
an’ sometimes it lasted till mornin*. We lookit 
upon the mester almost wi’ awe, sittin’ there sae 
helpless in his chair, an’ no fleid to be left alane. 
He had lang white hair, an’ a saft bonny face ’at 
would hae made ’im respeckit by onybody, an’ aye 
when we speired if he wasna fleid to be left alane, 
he said, ‘ Them ’at has a clear conscience has nae- 
thing to fear frae ghosts.’ 

“ There was some ’at said the curse would never 
leave the farm till the house was razed to the 
ground, an’ it’s the truth I’m tellin’ ye whin I say 


104 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


there was talk among the men aboot settin’t on fire. 
The mester was richt stern when he heard o’ that, 
quotin’ frae Scripture in a solemn wy ’at abashed 
the masons, but he said ’at in his opeenion there 
was a bairn buried on the farm, an’ till it was found 
the cradle would go on rockin’. After that the 
masons dug in a lot o’ places lookin’ for the body, 
an’ they found some queer things, too, but never 
nae sign o’ a murdered litlin’. Ay, I dinna ken 
what would hae happened if the commotion had 
gaen on muckle langer. One thing I’m sure o’ is 
’at the mistress would hae gaen daft, she took it 
a’ sae terrible to heart. 

I lauch at it noo, but I tell ye I used to tak my 
heart to my bed in my mooth. If ye hinna heard 
the story, I dinna think ye’ll be able to guess what 
the ghost cradle was.” 

I said I had been trying to think what the tray 
had to do with it. 

“ It had everything to do wi’t,” said Jess ; “an’ 
if the masons had kent hoo that cradle was rockit, 
I think they would hae killed the mester. It was 
Eppie ’at found oot, an’ she telt naebody but me, 
though mony a ane kens noo, I see ye canna mak 


THE GHOST CRADLE. 


105 

it oot yet, so I’ll tell ye what the cradle was. The 
tray was keepit against the kitchen wall near the 
mester, an’ he played on’t wi’ his foot He made 
it gang bump bump, an’ the soond was juist like a 
cradle rockin’. Ye could hardly believe sic a 
thing would hae made that din, but it did, an’ ye 
see we lay in our beds hearkenin’ for’t. Ay, when 
Eppie telt me, I could scarce believe ’at that guid 
devout-lookin’ man could hae been sae wicked. 
Ye see, when he found hoo terrified we a’ were, he 
keepit it up. The wy Eppie found out i’ the tail 
o’ the day was by wonderin’ at ’im sleepin’ sae 
muckle in the daytime. He did that so as to be 
fresh for his sport at nicht. What a fine releegious 
man we thocht ’im, too ! 

“ Eppie couldna bear the very sicht o’ the tray 
after that, an’ she telt me to break it up ; but I 
keepit it, ye see. The lump i’ the middle’s the 
mark, as ye may say, o’ the auld man’s foot/' 


CHAPTER XII. 

THE TRAGEDY OF A WIFE. 

Were Jess still alive to tell the life-story of 
Sam’l Fletcher and his wife, you could not hear 
it and sit still. The ghost cradle is but a page 
from the black history of a woman who married, 
to be blotted out from that hour. One case of 
the kind I myself have known, of a woman so 
good mated to a man so selfish that I cannot 
think of her even now with a steady mouth. Hers 
was the tragedy of living on, more mournful than 
the tragedy that kills. In Thrums the weavers 
spoke of “ lousing ” from their looms, removing 
the chains, and there is something woeful in that. 
But pity poor Nanny Coutts, who took her chains 
to bed with her. 

Nanny was buried a month or more before I 


THE TRAGEDY OF A WIFE. 


107 


came to the house on the brae, and even in Thrums 
the dead are seldom remembered for so long a 
time as that. But it was only after Sanders was 
left alone that we learned what a woman she had 
been, and how basely we had wronged her. She 
was an angel, Sanders went about whining when 
he had no longer a woman to ill-treat. He had 
this sentimental way with him, but it lost its effect 
after we knew the man. 

** A deevil couldna hae deserved waur treat- 
ment,” Tammas Haggart said to him ; “gang oot 
o’ my sicht, man.” 

“I’ll blame mysel till I die,” Jess said, with tears 
in her eyes, “ for no understandin’ puir Nanny 
better.” 

So Nanny got sympathy at last, but not until 
her forgiving soul had left her tortured body. 
There was many a kindly heart in Thrums that 
would have gone out to her in her lifetime, but 
we could not have loved her without upbraiding 
him, and she would not buy sympathy at the price. 
What a little story it is, and how few words are 
required to tell it ! He was a bad husband to her, 
and she kept it secret. That is Nanny’s life 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


loS 

summed up. It is all that was left behind when 
her coffin went down the brae. Did she love him 
to the end, or was she only doing what she thought 
her duty ? It is not for me even to guess. A good 
woman who suffers is altogether beyond man’s 
reckoning. To such heights of self-sacrifice we 
cannot rise. It crushes us ; it ought to crush us on 
to our knees. For us who saw Nanny, infirm, 
shrunken, and so weary, yet a type of the noblest 
womanhood, suffering for years, and misunderstood 
her to the end, what expiation can there be } I do 
not want to storm at the man who made her life 
so burdensome. Too many years have passed for 
that, nor would Nanny take it kindly if I called 
her man names. 

Sanders worked little after his marriage. He 
had a sore back, he said, which became a torture 
if he leant forward at his loom. What truth there 
was in this I cannot say, but not every weaver in 
Thrums could “louse” when his back grew sore. 
Nanny went to the loom in his place, filling as 
well as weaving, and he walked about, dressed 
better than the common, and with cheerful words 
for those who had time to listen. Nanny got no 


THE TRAGEDY OF A WIFE. 


109 


approval even for doing his work as well as her 
own, for they were understood to have money, and 
Sanders let us think her merely greedy. We 
drifted into his opinions. 

Had Jess been one of those who could go about, 
she would, I think, have read Nanny better than 
the rest of us, for her intellect was bright, and 
always led her straight to her neighbours’ hearts. 
But Nanny visited no one, and so Jess only knew 
her by hearsay. Nanny’s standoffishness, as it was 
called, was not a popular virtue, and she was 
blamed still more for trying to keep her husband 
out of other people’s houses. He was so frank 
and full of gossip, and she was so reserved. He 
would go everywhere, and she nowhere. He had 
been known to ask neighbours to tea, and she had 
shown that she wanted them away, or even begged 
them not to come. We were not accustomed to 
go behind the face of a thing, and so we set down 
Nanny’s inhospitality to churlishness or greed. 
Only after her death, when other women had to 
attend him, did we get to know what a tyrant 
Sanders was at his own hearth. The ambition of 
Nanny’s life was that we should never know it, that 


no 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


we should continue extolling him, and say what 
we chose about herself. She knew that if we went 
much about the house and saw how he treated her, 
Sanders would cease to be a respected man in 
Thrums. 

So neat in his dress was Sanders, that he was 
seldom seen abroad in corduroys. His blue bonnet 
for everyday wear was such as even well-to-do 
farmers only wore at fair-time, and it was said that 
he had a handkerchief for every day in the week. 
Jess often held him up to Hendry as a model of 
courtesy and polite manners. 

“Him an’ Nanny’s no weel matched,” she used 
to say, “ for he has grand ideas, an’ she’s o’ the 
commonest. It maun be a richt trial to a man wi’ 
his fine tastes to hae a wife ’at’s wrapper’s never 
even on, an’ wha doesna wash her mutch aince in 
a month.” 

It is true that Nanny was a slattern, but only 
because she married into slavery. She was kept 
so busy washing and ironing for Sanders that she 
ceased to care how she looked herself. What did 
it matter whether her mutch was clean ? Weaving 
and washing and cooking, doing the work of a 


THE TRAGEDY OF A WIFE, 


111 


breadwinner as well as of a housewife, hers was 
soon a body prematurely old, on which no wrapper 
would sit becomingly. Before her face, Sanders 
would hint that her slovenly ways and dress tried 
him sorely, and in company at least she only bowed 
her head. We were given to respecting those who 
worked hard, but Nanny, we thought, was a woman 
of means, and Sanders let us call her a miser. He 
was always anxious, he said, to be generous, but 
Nanny would not let him assist a starving child. 
They had really not a penny beyond what Nanny 
earned at the loom, and now we know how Sanders 
shook her if she did not earn enough. His vanity 
was responsible for the story about her wealth, and 
she would not have us think him vain. 

Because she did so much, we said that she was 
as strong as a cart-horse. The doctor who attended 
her during the last week of her life discovered 
that she had never been well. Yet we had often 
wondered at her letting Sanders pit his own 
potatoes when he was so unable. 

“ Them ’at’s strong, ye see,” Sanders explained, 
“ doesna ken what illness is, an* so it’s nat’ral they 
shouldna sympathize wi’ onweel fowk. Ay. I’m 


12 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


rale thankfu’ 'at Nanny keeps her health. I often 
envy her.” 

These were considered creditable sentiments, 
and so they might have been had Nanny uttered 
them. Thus easily Sanders built up a reputation 
for never complaining. I know now that he was 
a hard and cruel man who should have married a 
shrew ; but while Nanny lived I thought he had 
a beautiful nature. Many a time I have spoken 
with him at Hendiy^’s gate, and felt the better of 
his heartiness. 

“ I mauna complain/’ he always said ; ‘‘ na, we 
maun juist fecht awa.” 

Little, indeed, had he to complain of, and little 
did he fight away. 

Sanders went twice to church every Sabbath, 
and thrice when he got the chance. There was 
no man who joined so lustily in the singing or 
looked straighter at the minister during the prayer. 
[ have heard the minister say that Sanders’s con- 
stant attendance was an encouragement and a help 
to him. Nanny had been a great church-goer 
when she was a maiden, but after her marriage she 
only went in the afternoons, and a time came when 


THE TRAGEDY OF A WIFE. 


113 

she ceased altogether to attend. The minister 
admonished her many times, telling her, among 
other things, that her irreligious ways were a 
distress to her husband. She never replied that 
she could not go to church in the forenoon because 
Sanders insisted on a hot meal being waiting him 
when the service ended. But it was true that 
Sanders, for appearance’s sake, would have had 
her go to church in the afternoons. It is now 
believed that on this point alone did she refuse to 
do as she was bidden. Nanny was very far from 
perfect, and the reason she forsook the kirk utterly 
was because she had no Sabbath clothes. 

She died as she had lived, saying not a word 
when the minister, thinking it his duty, drew a cruel 
comparison between her life and her husband’s. 

“ I got my first glimpse into the real state of 
affairs in that house,” the doctor told me one 
night on the brae, “the day before she died. 
‘ You’re sure there’s no hope for me ? * she asked 
wistfully, and when I had to tell the truth she 
sank back on the pillow with a look of joy.” 

Nanny died with a lie on her lips. “Ay,” she 
said, “ Sanders has been a guid man to me.” 


9 


CHAPTER XIII 


MAKING THE BEST OF IT. 

Hendry had a way of resuming a conversation 
where he had left off the night before. He would 
revolve a topic in his mind, too, and then begin 
aloud, " He’s a queer ane,” or, “ Say ye so ? ” which 
was at times perplexing. With the whole day 
before them, none of the family was inclined to 
waste strength in talk ; but one morning when he 
was blowing the steam off his porridge, Hendry 
said, suddenly — 

** He’s hame again.” 

The women-folk gave him time to say to whom 
he was referring, which he occasionally did as an 
after-thought. But he began to sup his porridge, 
making eyes as it went steaming down his throat. 

“I dinna ken wha ye mean,” Jess said; while 


MAKING THE BEST OF IT 115 

Leeby, who was on her knees rubbing the hearth- 
stone a bright blue, paused to catch her father’s 
answer. 

**Jeames Geogehan,” replied Hendry, with the 
horn spoon in his mouth. 

Leeby turned to Jess for enlightenment. 

** Geogehan,” repeated Jess; “what, no little 
Jeames ’at ran awa } ” 

“ Ay, ay, but he’s a muckle stoot man noo, an’ 
gey grey.” 

“ Ou, I dinna wonder at that. It’s a guid forty 
year since he ran off.” 

“ I waurant ye couldna say exact hoo lang syne 
it is?” 

Hendry asked this question because Jess was 
notorious for her memory, and he gloried in put- 
ting it to the test. 

“ Let’s see,” she said. 

“ But wha is he ? ” asked Leeby. “ I never kent 
nae Geogehans in Thrums.” 

“ Weel, it’s forty-one years syne come Michael- 
mas,” said Jess. 

“ Hoo do ye ken ? ” 

“I ken fine. Ye mind his father had been 


ii6 A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 

lickin’ ’im, an’ he ran awa in a passion, cryin’ oot 
at he would never come back ? Ay, then, he had 
a pair o’ boots on at the time, an’ his father ran 
after’ im an’ took them afF ’im. The boots was the 
last ’at Davie Mearns made, an’ it’s fully ane- 
an -forty years since Davie fell ower the quarry on 
the day o’ the hill-market. That settles’t. Ay, 
an’ Jeames ’ll be turned fifty noo, for he was 
cornin’ on for ten year auld at that time. Ay, ay, 
an’ he’s come back. What a state Eppie ’ll be 
in!” 

“ Tell’s wha he is, mother.* 

“ Od, he’s Eppie Guthrie’s son. Her man was 
William Geogehan, but he died afore you was 
born, an’ as Jeames was their only bairn, the name 
o’ Geogehan’s been a kind o’ lost sicht o’. Hae 
ye seen him, Hendry ? Is’t true ’at he made a for- 
tune in thae far-awa countries? Eppie ’ll be 
blawin’ aboot him richt ?” 

“ There’s nae doubt aboot the siller,* said 
Hendry, “for he drove in a carriage frae Tillie- 
drum, an’ they say he needs a closet to hing his 
claes in, there’s sic a heap o’ them. Ay, but that’s 
no a’ he’s brocht, na, far frae a’.” 


MAKING THE BEST OF IT. 


117 


“ Dinna gang awa till ye’ve telt’s a’ aboot ’im. 
What mair has he brocht ? ” 

“ He’s brocht a wife,” said Hendry, twisting his 
face curiously. 

“ There’s naething surprisin’ in that.** 

“Ay, but there is, though. Ye see, Eppie had 
a letter frae ’im no mony weeks syne, sayin’ ’at he 
wasna deid, an’ he was cornin’ hame wi’ a fortune. 
He said, too, ’at he was a single man, an’ she’s 
been boastin’ aboot that, so ye may think ’at she 
got a surprise when he hands a wuman oot o* the 
carriage.” 

“An’ no a pleasant ane,” said Jess. “Had he 
been leein ’ } ” 

“Na, he was single when he wrote, an’ single 
when he got the length o’ Tilliedrum. Ye see, he 
fell in wi’ the lassie there, an’ juist gaed clean aft 
his heid aboot her. After managin’ to withstand 
the women o’ foreign lands for a’ thae years, he 
gaed fair skeer aboot this stocky at *Tilliedrum. 
She’s juist seventeen year auld, an’ the auld fule 
sits wi’ his airm round her in Eppie’s hoose, though 
they’ve been mairit this fortnicht.” 

“The doited fule,” said Jess. 


ii8 A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 

Jeames Geogehan and his bride became the talk 
of Thrums, and Jess saw them from her window 
several times. The first time she had only eyes 
for the jacket with fur lound it worn by Mrs. 
Geogehan, but subsequently she took in Jeames. 

“ He’s tryin’ to carry’t aff wi’ his heid in the air,” 
she said, “ but I can see he’s fell shamefaced, an’ 
nae wonder. Ay, I sepad he’s mair ashamed o’t 
in his heart than she is. It’s an awful like thing o’ 
a lassie to marry an auld man. She had dune’t 
for the siller. Ay, there’s pounds’ worth o’ fur 
aboot that jacket.” 

“ They say she had siller hersel,” said Tibbie 
Birse. 

“ Dinna tell me,” said Jess. “ I ken by her wy 
o’ carry in’ hersel ’at she ne/er had a jacket like 
that afore.” 

Eppie was not the only person in Thrums whom 
this marriage enraged. Stories had long been 
alive of Jeames’s fortune, which his cousins’ 
children were some day to divide among them- 
selves, and as a con.^equence these young men and 
women looked op Mrs. Geogehan as a thief. 

“Dinngi bring the wife to our hoose, Jeames,” 


MAKING THE BEST OF IT. 


119 


one of them told him, “for we would be fair 
ashamed to hae her. We used to hae a respect 
for yer name, so we couldna look her i’ the face.” 

“ She’s mair like yer dochter than yer wife,” 
said another. 

“Na,” said a third, “ naebody could mistak her 
for yer dochter. She’s ower young-like for that.” 

“ Wr the siller you’ll leave her, Jeames,” 
Tammas Haggart told him, “ she’ll get a younger 
man for her second venture.” 

All this was very trying to the newly-married 
man, who was thirsting for sympathy. Hendry 
was the person whom he took into his confidence. 

“ It may hae been foolish at my time o’ life,” 
Hendry reported him to have said, “ but I couldna 
help it. If they juist kent her better they couldna 
but see ’at she’s a terrible takkin’ crittur.” 

Jeames was generous; indeed he had come 
home with the intention of scattering largess. A 
beggar met him one day on the brae, and got a 
shilling from him. She was waving her arms 
triumphantly as she passed Hendry’s house, and 
Leeby got the story from her. 

Eh, he’s a fine man that, an’ a saft ane,” the 


120 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


woman said. “I juist speired at Mm hoo his 
bonny wife was, an’ he oot wi’ a shillin’ f ” 

Leeby did not keep this news to herself, and 
soon it was through the town. Jeames’s face 
began to brighten. 

“ They’re cornin’ round to a mair sensible wy o’ 
lookin’ at things,” he told Hendry. I was 
walkin’ wi’ the wife i’ the buryin’ ground yesterday, 
an’ we met Kitty McQueen. She was ane o’ the 
warst agin me at first, but she telt me i’ the 
buryin’ ground ’at when a man mairit he should 
please ’imsel. Oh, they’re cornin’ round.” 

What Kitty told Jess was — 

“ I minded o’ the tinkler wuman ’at he gae a 
shillin’ to, so I thocht I would butter up at the 
auld fule too. Weel, I assure ye, I had nae suner 
said ’at he was rale wise to marry wha he likit than 
he slips a pound note into my hand. Ou, Jess, 
we’ve taen the wrang wy wi’ Jeames. I’ve telt a’ 
my bairns ’at if they meet him they’re to praise the 
wife terrible, an’ I’m far mista’en if that doesna 
mean five shillins to ilka ane o’ them.” 

Jean Whamond got a pound note for saying that 
Jeames’s wife had an uncommon pretty voice, and 


MAKING THE BEET OF IT 


I2I 


Davit Lunan had ten shillings for a judicious word 
about her attractive manners. Tibbie Birse invited 
the newly-married couple to tea (one pound), 

“ They’re takkin’ to her, they’re takkin’ to her,” 
Jeames said, gleefully. “ I kent they would come 
round in time. Ay, even my mother, ’at was sae 
mad at first, sits for hours noo aside her, haudin’ 
her hand. They’re juist inseparable.” 

The time came when we had Mr. and Mrs. 
Geogehan and Eppie to tea. 

“ It’s true enough,” Leeby ran ben to tell Jess 
“ ’at Eppie an’ the wife’s fond o’ ane another. I 
wouldna hae believed it o’ Eppie if I hadna seen 
it, but I assure ye they sat even at the tea-table 
haudin’ ane another’s hands. I waurant they’re 
doin’t this meenute.” 

“ I wasna born on a Sabbath,” retorted Jess. 
“Na, na, dinna tell me Eppie’s fond o’ her. Tell 
Eppie to come but to the kitchen when the tea’s 
ower.” 

Jess and Eppie had half an hour’s conversation 
alone, and then our guests left. 

“ It’s a richt guid thing,” said Hendry, ’at 
Eppie has ta’en sic a notion o’ the wife.” 


122 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


“ Ou, ay,” said Jess. 

Then Hendry hobbled out of the house. 

“What said Eppie to ye?” Leeby asked her 
mother. 

“Juist what I expeckit,” Jess answered. “Ye 
see she’s dependent on Jeames, so she has to 
butter up at ’im.” 

“ Did she say onything aboot haudin’ the wife’s 
hand sae fond-like ? ” 

“ Ay, she said it was an awfu’ trial to her, an* ’at 
it sickened her to see Jeames an’ the wife baith 
believin’ ’at she likit to do’t.** 


CHAPTER XIV. 


VISITORS AT THE MANSE. 

0^ bringing home his bride, the minister showed 
her to us, and we thought she would do when 
she realized that she was not the minister. She 
was a grand lady from Edinburgh, though very 
frank, and we simple folk amused her a good 
deal, especially when we were sitting cowed in 
the manse parlour drinking a dish of tea with 
her, as happened to Leeby, her father, and me, 
three days before Jamie came home. 

Leeby had refused to be drawn into conversa- 
tion, like one who knew her place, yet all her 
actions were genteel and her monosyllabic replies 
in the Englishy tongue, as of one who was, 
after all, a little above the common. When the 
minister’s wife asked her whether sh® took sugar 


124 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


and cream, she said politely, “If you please" 
(though she did not take sugar), a reply that 
contrasted with Hendry’s equally well-intended 
answer to the same question. “ I’m no partikler,’’ 
was what Hendry said. 

Hendry had left home glumly, declaring that 
the white collar Jess had put on him would 
throttle him ; but her feikieness ended in his 
surrender, and he was looking unusually perjink. 
Had not his daughter been present he would have 
been the most at ease of the company, but her 
manners were too fine not to make an impression 
upon one who knew her on her everyday behaviour, 
and she had also ways of bringing Hendry to 
himself by a touch beneath the table. It was in 
church that Leeby brought to perfection her 
manner of looking after her father. When he had 
confidence in the preacher’s soundness, he would 
sometimes have slept in his pew if Leeby had 
not had a watchful foot She wakened him in 
an instant, while still looking modestly at the 
pulpit ; however reverently he might try to fall 
over, Leeby’s foot went out. She was such an 
artist that I never caught her in the act All I 


VISITORS AT THE MANSE, 


125 


knew for certain was that, now and then, Hendry 
suddenly sat up. 

The ordeal was over when Leeby went upstairs 
to put on her things. After tea Hendry had 
become bolder in talk, his subject being minis- 
terial. He had an extraordinary knowledge, got 
no one knew where, of the matrimonial affairs 
of all the ministers in these parts, and his stories 
about them ended frequently with a chuckle. He 
always took it for granted that a minister’s mar- 
riage was womanhood’s great triumph, and that 
the particular woman who got him must be very 
clever. Some of his tales were even more 
curious than he thought them, such as the one 
Leeby tried to interrupt by saying we must be 
going. 

“There’s Mr. Pennycuick, noo,” said Hendry, 
shaking his head in wonder at what he had to 
tell; “him ’at’s minister at Tilliedrum. Weel,when 
he was a probationer he was michty poor, an’ 
one day he was walkin’ into Thrums frae Glen 
Quharity, an’ he tak’s a rest at a little housey 
on the road. The fowk didna ken him ava, but 
they saw he was a minister, an’ the lassie was 


126 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


sorry to see him wi’ sic an auld hat What think 
ye she did ? ” 

“Come away, father,” said Leeby, re-entering 
the parlour ; but Hendry was now in full pursuit 
of his story. 

“ ril tell ye what she did,” he continued. “ She 
juist took his hat awa, an’ put her father’s new 
ane in its place, an’ Mr. Pennycuick never kent the 
differ till he landed in Thrums. It was terrible 
kind o’ her. Ay, but the auld man would be in 
a michty rage when he found she had swappit the 
hats.” 

“ Come away,” said Leeby, still politely, though 
she was burning to tell her mother how Hendry 
had disgraced them. 

“ The minister,” said Hendry, turning his back 
on Leeby, “didna forget the lassie. Na ; as sune 
as he got a kirk, he married her. Ay, she 
got her reward. He married her. It was rale 
noble of ’im.” 

I do not know what Leeby said to Hendry 
when she got him beyond the manse gate, for I 
stayed behind to talk to the minister. As it 
turned out, the minister’s wife did most of the 


VISITORS AT THE MANSE. 


127 


talking, smiling good-humouredly at country gaw- 
kiness the while. 

“Yes,” she said, “I am sure I shall like Thrums, 
though those teas to the congregation are a little 
trying. Do you know, Thrums is the only place 
I was ever in where it struck me that the men 
are cleverer than the women.” 

She told us why. 

“Well, to-night affords a case in point. Mr. 
McQumpha was quite brilliant, was he not, 
in comparison with his daughter } Really she 
seemed so put out at being at the manse that 
she could not raise her eyes. I question if she 
would know me again, and I am sure she sat 
in the room as one blindfolded. I left her in 
the bedroom a minute, and I assure you, when 
I returned she was still standing on the same spot 
in the centre of the floor.” 

I pointed out that Leeby had been awestruck. 

“ I suppose so,” she said ; “ but it is a pity she 
cannot make use of her eyes, if not of her tongue. 
Ah, the Thrums women are good, I believe, but 
their wits are sadly in need of sharpening. I 
daresay it comes of living in so small a place.” 


128 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


I overtook Leeby on the brae, aware, as I saw 
her alone, that it had been her father whom I 
passed talking to Tammas Haggart in the Square. 
Hendry stopped to have what he called a tove 
with any likely person he encountered, and, indeed, 
though he and I often took a walk on Saturdays, 
I generally lost him before we were clear of the 
town. 

In a few moments Leeby and I were at home 
to give Jess the news. 

“VVhaur’s yer father?’* asked Jess, as if 
Hendry’s way of dropping behind was still 
unknown to her. 

“ Ou, I left him speakin’ to Gavin Birse,” said 
Leeby. “I daursay he’s awa to some hoose.” 

“ It’s no very silvendy (safe) his coinin’ ower 
the brae by himsel,” said Jess, adding in a bitter 
tone of conviction, “ but he’ll gang in to no hoose 
as lang as he’s so weel dressed. Na, he- would 
think it boastfu’.” 

I sat down to a book by the kitchen fire ; but, 
as Leeby became communicative, I read less and 
less.. While she spoke she was baking bannocks 
with all the might of her, and Jess leaning 


VISITORS A 7 THE MANSE. 


129 


forward in her chair, was arranging them in a 
semicircle round the fire. 

“ Na,” was the first remark of Leeby’s that 
came between me and my book, “it is no new 
furniture.” 

“ But there was three cart-loads o’t, Leeby, sent 
on frae Edinbory. Tibbie Birse helpit to lift it 
in, and she said the parlour furniture beat a?’ 

“ Ou, it’s substantial, but it is no new. I sepad 
it had been bocht cheap second-hand, for the 
chair I had was terrible scratched like, an’, what’s 
mair, the airm-chair was a heap shinnier than the 
rest.” 

“Ay, ay, I wager it had been new stuffed. 
Tibbie said the carpet cowed for grandeur?” 

“ Oh, I dinna deny it’s a guid carpet ; but if it’s 
been turned once it’s been turned half a dozen 
times, so it’s far frae new. Ay, an’ forby, it was 
rale threadbare aneath the table, so ye may be 
sure they’ve been cuttin't an’ puttin’ the worn 
pairt whaur it would be least seen.” 

“ They say ’at there’s twa grand gas brackets 
i* the parlour, an’ a wonderfu’ gasoliery i’ the 
dinin’-room ?” 

ro 


130 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


“ We wasna i’ the dinin’-room, so I ken naething 
aboot the gasoliery ; but I’ll tell ye what the gas 
brackets is. I recognized them immeditly. Ye 
mind the auld gasoliery i’ the dinin’-room had 
twa lichts? Ay, then, the parlour brackets is 
made oot o’ the auld gasoliery.” 

“Weel, Leeby, as sure as ye’re standin’ there, 
that passed through my head as sune as Tibbie 
mentioned them ! ” 

“ There’s nae doot about it. Ay, I was in ane 
o’ the bedrooms, too ! ” 

“It would be grand?” 

“I wouldna say ’at it was parti kler grand, but 
there was a great mask (quantity) o’ things in’t, 
an’ near everything was covered wi’ cretonne. 
But the chairs dinna match. There was a very 
bonny-painted cloth alang the chimley — what 
they call a mantlepiece border, I warrant.” 

“ Sal, I’ve often wondered what they was.” 

“Weel, I assure ye they winna be ill to mak, 
for the border was juist nailed upon a board laid 
on the chimley. There’s naething to bender’s 
makin’ ane for the room.” 

“Ay, we could sew something on the border 


VISITORS AT THE MANSE, 131 

instead o* paintin't. The room lookit weel, ye 
say?” 

“Yes, but it was economically furnished. There 
was nae carpet below the wax-cloth ; na, there 
was nane below the bed either,” 

“ Was’t a grand bed ? ” 

“ It had a fell lot o* brass aboot it, but there 
was juist one pair o’ blankets. I thocht it was 
gey shabby, hae’n the ewer a different pattern 
frae the basin ; ay, an’ there was juist a poker 
in the fireplace, there was nae tangs.” 

“ Yea, yea ; they’ll hae but one set o* bedroom 
fireirons. The tangs’ll be in anither room. Tod, 
that’s no sae michty grand for Edinbory. What 
like was she hersel ? ” 

“Ou, very ladylike and saft spoken. She’s a 
canty body an’ frank. She wears her hair low 
on the left side to hod (hide) a scar, an’ there’s 
twa warts on her richt hand.” 

“There hadna been a fire i* the parlour?” 

“ No, but it was ready to licht There was 
sticks and paper in’t The paper was oot o’ a 
dressmaker’s journal.” 

“Ye say so? She’ll mak her ain frocks, I sepad.” 


132 A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 

When Hendry entered to take off his collar and 
coat before sitting down to his evening meal of 
hot water, porter, and bread mixed in a bowl, Jess 
sent me off to the attic. As I climbed the stairs 
I remembered that the minister’s wife thought 
Leeby in need of sharpening. 


CHAPTER XV. 


HOW GAVIN BIRSE PUT IT TO MAG LOWNIE. 

In a wet day the rain gathered in blobs on the 
road that passed our garden. Then it crawled 
into the cart-tracks until the road was streaked 
with water. Lastly, the water gathered in heavy 
yellow pools. If the on-ding still continued, 
clods of earth toppled from the garden dyke into 
the ditch. 

On such a day, when even the dulseman had 
gone into shelter, and the women scudded by with 
their wrappers over their heads, came Gavin Birse 
to our door. Gavin, who was the Glen Quharity 
post, was still young, but had never been quite the 
same man since some amateurs in the glen ironed 
his back for rheumatism. I thought he had called 
to have a crack with me. He sent his compli- 


34 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


ments up to the attic, however, by Leeby, and 
would I come and be a witness ? 

Gavin came up and explained. He had taken 
off his scarf and thrust it into his pocket, lest the 
rain should take the colour out of it. His boots 
cheeped, and his shoulders had risen to his ears. 
He stood steaming before my fire. 

“If it’s no’ ower muckle to ask ye,’* he said, “ I 
would like ye for a witness.” 

“ A witness I But for what do you need a wit- 
ness, Gavin ? ” 

“ I want ye,” he said, “ to come wi’ me to Mag’s, 
and be a witness.” 

Gavin and Mag Birse had been engaged for a 
year or more. Mag was the daughter of Janet 
Ogilvy, who was best remembered as the body 
that took the hill (that is, wandered about it) for 
twelve hours on the day Mr. Dishart, the Auld 
Licht minister, accepted a call to another church. 

“You don’t mean to tell me, Gavin,” I asked, 
“ that your marriage is to take place to-day ? ” 

By the twist of his mouth I saw that he was only 
deferring a smile. 

* Far frae that,” he said. 


HO W GA VIN PUT IT TO MAG LO WNIE. 135 

** Ah, then, you have quarrelled, and I am to 
speak up for you ? ” 

“ Na, na,’* he said, “ I dinna want ye to do that 
above all things. It would be a favour if ye could 
gie me a bad character.” 

This beat me, and, I daresay, my face showed it. 

“I’m no* juist what ye would call anxious to 
marry Mag noo,” said Gavin, without a tremor. 

I told him to go on. 

“ There’s a lassie oot at Craigiebuckle,” he ex- 
plained, “workin’ on the farm — ^Jeanie Luke by 
name. Ye may ha’e seen her ? ” 

“ What of her ? ” I asked, severely. 

“ Weel,” said Gavin, still unabashed, “ I’m 
thinkin’ noo ’at I would rather ha’e her.’* 

Then he stated his case more fully. 

“Ay, I thocht I liked Mag oncommon till I 
saw Jeanie, an’ I like her fine yet, but I prefer the 
other ane. That state o’ matters canna gang on 
for ever, so I came into Thrums the day to settle ’t 
one wy or another.” 

*‘And how,” I asked, “do you propose going 
about it ? It is a somewhat delicate business.” 

“ Ou, I see nae great difficulty in ’t. Ill’ speir 


136 A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 

at Mag, blunt oot, if she’ll let me aff. Yes, I’ll 
put it to her plain.” 

“ You’re sure Jeanie would take you ? ” 

“ Ay ; oh, there’s nae fear o’ that.” ‘ 

“ But if Mag keeps you to your bargain ? ” 

“ Weel, in that case there’s nae harm done.” 

“ You are in a great hurry, Gavin ? ” 

“Ye may say that ; but I want to be married. 
The wifie I lodge wi’ canna last lang, an’ I would 
like to settle doon in some place.” 

“ So you are on your way to Mag’s now ? ” 

“ Ay, we’ll get her in atween twal’ and ane.” 

“ Oh, yes ; but why do you want me to go with 
you r 

“ I want ye for a witness. If she winna let me 
aff, weel and guid ; and if she will, it’s better to hae 
a witness in case she should go back on her word.” 

Gavin gave his proposal briskly, and as coolly 
as if he were only asking me to go fishing ; but 
I did not accompany him to Mag’s. He left the 
house to look for another witness, and about an 
hour afterwards Jess saw him pass with Tammas 
Haggart. Tammas cried in during the evening to 
tell us how the mission prospered. 


HOW GA VIN PUT IT TO MAG LOWNIE. 137 

** Mind ye,” said Tammas, a drop of water 
hanging to the point of his nose, “ I disclaim all 
responsibility in the business. I ken Mag weel 
for a thrifty, respectable woman, as her mither was 
afore her, and so I said to Gavin when he came to 
speir me.” 

“ Ay, mony a pirn has ’Lisbeth filled to me,” said 
Hendry, settling down to a reminiscence. 

“No to be ower hard on Gavfin,” continued 
Tammas, forestalling Hendry, “he took what I 
said in guid part ; but aye when I stopped 
speakin’ to draw breath, he says, * The queistion 
is, will ye come wi’ me ? * He was michty made 
up in ’s mind.” 

“Weel, ye went wi’ him,” suggested Jess, who 
wanted to bring Tammas to the point. 

“ Ay,” said the stone-breaker, “ but no in sic a 
hurry as that.” 

He worked his mouth round and round, to clear 
the course, as it were, for a sarcasm. 

“ Fowk often say,” he continued, “’at ’am quic.! 
beyond the ordinar’ in seein’ the humorous' side 
o’ things.” 

Here Tammas paused, and looked at us. 


138 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


“ So ye are, Tammas,*’ said Hendry. “ Losh, 
ye mind hoo ye saw the humorous side o* me 
wearin’ a pair o' boots 'at wisna marrows 1 No, 
the ane had a toe-piece on, an' the other hadna." 

“Ye juist wore them sometimes when ye was 
delvin',” broke in Jess, “ ye have as guid a pair o' 
boots as ony in Thrums.” 

“ Ay, but I had worn them,” said Hendry, “ at 
odd times for mair than a year, an' I had never 
seen the humorous side o' them. Weel, as fac as 
death (here he addressed me), Tammas had juist 
seen them twa or three times when he saw the 
humorous side o’ them. Syne I saw their humor- 
ous side, too, but no till Tammas pointed it oot.” 

“ That was naething,” said Tammas, “ naething 
ava to some things I’ve done.” 

“ But what aboot Mag ? ” said Leeby. 

“We wasna that length, was we?” said Tam- 
mas. “ Na, we was speakin’ aboot the humorous 
side. Ay, wait a wee, I didna mention the 
humorous side for naething.” 

He paused to reflect. 

“ Oh, yes,” he said at last, brightening up, “ I 
was sayin’ to ye hoo quick I was to see the 


HOIV GA VIN PUT IT TO MAG LOWNIE, 139 

humorous side o’ onything. Ay, then, what made 
me say that was ’at in a clink (flash) I saw the 
humorous side o’ Gavin’s position.” 

“ Man, man,” said Hendry, admiringly, “ and 
what is ’t ? ” 

“ Oh, it’s this, there’s something humorous in 
speirin’ a woman to let ye aff so as ye can be 
married to another woman.” 

“ I daursay there is,” said Hendry, doubtfully. 

“Did she let him aff?” asked Jess, taking the 
words out of Leeby’s mouth. 

“I’m cornin’ to that,” said Tammas. “Gavin 
proposes to me after I had hacn my laugh ** 

“ Yes,” cried Hendry, banging the table with his 
fist, “ it has a humorous side. Ye’re richt again, 
Tammas.” 

“ I wish ye wadna blatter (beat) the table,” said 
Jess, and then Tammas proceeded. 

“ Gavin wanted me to tak’ paper an’ ink an’ a 
pen wi’ me, to write the proceedins doon, but I 
said, ‘ Na, na. I’ll tak’ paper, but no nae ink nor 
nae pen, for there’ll be ink an* a pen there.* That 
was what I said.” 

“An’ did she let him aff? ” asked Leeby, 


140 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


“Weel,” said Tammas, “ aff we goes to Mag’s 
hoose, an’ sure enough Mag was in. She was 
alane, too ; so Gavin, no to waste time, juist sat 
doon for politeness’ sake, an’ syne rises up again ; 
an’ says he, ‘ Marget Lownie, I ha’e a solemn 
question to speir at ye, namely this, Will you, 
Marget Lownie, let me, Gavin Birse, aff ? ” 

“ Mag would start at that ? ” 

“ Sal, she was braw an’ cool. I thocht she maun 
ha’e got wind o’ his intentions aforehand, for she 
juist replies, quiet-like, * Hoo do ye want aff, 
Gavin ? ’ 

“ ‘ Because,’ says he, like a book, ‘ my affections 
has undergone a change.’ 

“ * Ye mean Jean Luke,’ says Mag. 

“ ‘ That is wha I mean,’ says Gavin, very 
straitforrard.” 

“ But she didna let him aff, did she 
“ Na, she wasna the kind. Says she, * I wonder 
to hear ye, Gavin, but ’am no goio’ to agree to 
naething o’ that sort.’ ” 

** * Think it ower,’ says Gavin. 

“ ‘ Na, my mind’s made up,’ said she. 

“<Ye would sune get anither man,’ he says, 
earnestly. 


HOIV GAVIN PUT IT TO MAG LOWNIE. 141 


“ ‘ Hoo do I ken that ? * she speirs, rale sensibly, 
I thocht, for men’s no sae easy to get. 

“ ‘ ’Am sure o’ ’t,’ Gavin says, wi’ michty convic- 
tion in his voice, *• for ye’re bonny to look at, an’ 
weel-kent for bein’ a guid body.’ 

** ‘ Ay,’ says Mag, ‘ I’m glad ye like me, Gavin, 
for ye have to tak me.’ ” 

“ That put a clincher on him,” interrupted 
Hendry. 

** He was loth to gie in,” replied Tammas, “so he 
says, * Ye think ’am a fine character, Marget 
Lownie, but ye’re very far mista’en. I wouldna 
wonder but what I was lossin’ my place some o’ 
thae days, an’ syne whaur would ye be ? — Marget 
Lownie,’ he goes on, ‘ ’am nat’rally lazy an’ fond o’ 
the drink. As sure as ye stand there, ’am a 
reglar deevil ! ’ ” 

“ That was strong language,” said Hendry, “ but 
he would be wantin’ to fleg (frighten) her ? ” 

** Juist so, but he didna manage ’t, for Mag says, 
‘We a’ ha’e oor faults, Gavin, an’ deevil or no 
deevil, ye’re the man for me I * 

“Gavin thocht a bit,” continued Tammas, “an* 
syne he tries her on a new tack. ‘Marget 


142 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


Lownie/ he says, ‘ye’re father’s an auld man noo, 
an’ he has naebody but yersel to look after him. 
I’m thinkin’ it would be kind o’ cruel o’ me to tak 
ye awa frae him ? ’ ” 

“ Mag wouldna be ta’en in wi’ that ; she wasna 
born on a Sawbath,” said Jess, using one of her 
favourite sayings. 

“ She wasna,” answered Tammas. “ Says she, 
‘ Hae nae fear on that score, Gavin ; my father’s 
fine willin’ to spare me ! ’ ” 

“ An’ that ended it ? ” 

“ Ay, that ended it.” 

“ Did ye tak it doon in writin* ? ” asked Hendry. 

“There was nae need,” said Tammas, handing 
round his snuff-mull. “ No, I never touched paper. 
When I saw the thing was settled, I left them to 
their coortin’. They’re to tak a look at Snecky 
Hobart’s auld hoose the nicht It’s to let.** 


CHAPTER XVL 


THE SON FROM LONDON. 

In the spring of the year there used to come to 
Thrums a painter from nature whom Hendry 
spoke of as the drawer. He lodged with Jess in 
my attic, and when the weavers met him they said, 
“Weel, drawer,” and then passed on, grinning. 
Tam mas Haggart was the first to say this. 

The drawer was held a poor man because he 
straggled about the country looking for subjects 
for his draws, and Jess, as was her way, gave him 
many comforts for which she would not charge. 
That, I daresay, was why he painted for her a 
little portrait of Jamie. When the drawer came 
back to Thrums he always found the painting in 
a frame in the room. Here I must make a con- 
fession about Jess. She did not in her secret 
mind think the portrait quite the thing, and as 


144 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


soon as the drawer departed it was removed from 
the frame to make way for a calendar. The de- 
ception was very innocent, Jess being anxious not 
to hurt the donor’s feelings. 

To those who have the artist’s eye, the picture, 
which hangs in my school-house now, does not 
show a handsome lad, Jamie being short and 
dapper, with straw-coloured hair, and a chin that 
ran away into his neck. That is how I once re- 
garded him, but I have little heart for criticism 
of those I like, and, despite his madness for a 
season, of which alas, I shall have to tell, I am 
always Jamie’s friend. Even to hear any one 
disparaging the appearance of Jess’s son is to me 
a pain. 

All Jess’s acquaintances knew that in the be- 
ginning of every month a registered letter reached 
her from London. To her it was not a matter 
to keep secret. She was proud that the help she 
and Hendry needed in the gloaming of their lives 
should come from her beloved son, and the neigh- 
bours esteemed Jamie because he was good to 
his mother. Jess had more humour than any 
pther woman I have known while Leeby was 


THE SON FROM LONDON 


145 


but sparingly endowed ; yet, as the month neared 
its close, it was the daughter who put on the 
humorist, Jess thinking money too serious a thing 
to jest about. Then if Leeby had a moment for 
gossip, as when ironing a dickey for Hendry, and 
the iron was a trifle too hot, she would look archly 
at me before addressing her mother in these words : 

“ Will he send, think ye ? 

Jess, who had a conviction that he would send, 
affected surprise at the question. 

“Will Jamie send this month, do ye mean.? 
Na, oh, losh no ! it’s no to be expeckit. Na, he 
couldna do’t this time.” 

“ That’s what ye aye say, but he aye sends. Yes, 
an’ vara weel ye ken ’at he will send.” 

“ Na, na, Leeby ; dinna let me ever think o’ 
sic a thing this month.” 

“As if ye wasna thinkin’ o’t day an* nicht ! ” 

* He’s terrible mindfu’, Leeby, but he doesna 
hae’t. Na, no this month ; mebbe next month.” 

“ Do you mean to tell me, mother, ’at ye’ll no 
be up oot o’ yer bed on Monunday an hour 
afore yer usual time, lookin’ for the post ? ” 

“Na no this time. I may be up, an* tak a 


II 


146 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


look for ^im, but no expeckin* a registerdy ; na 
na, that wouldna be reasonable.” 

“Reasonable here, reasonable there, up you’ll 
be, keekin’ (peering) through the blind to see if 
the post’s cornin’, ay, an’ what’s mair, the post 
will come, and a registerdy in his hand wi’ fifteen 
shillings in’t at the least.” 

“ Dinna say fifteen, Leeby ; I would never think 

o’ sic a sum. Mebbe five ” 

“ Five ! I v/onder to hear ye. Vera weel you 
ken ’at since he had twenty-twa shillings in the 
week he’s never sent less than half a sovereign.” 

“No, but we canna expeck ” 

“ Expeck ! No, but it’s no expeck, it’s get.” 

On the Monday morning when I came down- 
stairs, Jess was in her chair by the window, beam- 
ing, a piece of paper in her hand. I did not 
require to be told about it, but I was told. 
Jess had been up before Leeby could get the 
fire lit, with great difficulty reaching the window 
in her bare feet, and many a time had she said 
that the post must be by. 

“ Havers,” said Leeby, “ he winna be for an hour 
yet. Come awa’ back to your bed.” 


THE SON FROM LONDON. 


147 


“ Na, he maun be by,” Jess would say in a few 
minutes ; “ ou, we couldna expeck this month.” 

So it went on until Jess’s hand shook the blind. 

“ He’s cornin’, Leeby, he’s cornin’. He’ll no 

hae naething, na, I couldna expeck He’s 

by!” 

“ I dinna believe it,” cried Leeby, running to 
the window, “ he’s juist at his tricks again.” 

This was in reference to a way our saturnine 
post had of pretending that he brought no letters 
and passing the door. Then he turned back, 
“Mistress McQumpha,” he cried, and whistled. 

“Run, Leeby, run,” said Jess, excitedly. 

Leeby hastened to the door, and came back 
with a registered letter. 

“ Regis terdy,” she cried in triumph, and Jess, 
with fond hands, opened the letter. By the time 
I came down the money was hid away in a box 
beneath the bed, where not even Leeby could 
find it, and Jess was on her chair hugging the 
letter. She preserved all her registered envelopes. 

This was the first time I had been in Thrums 
when Jamie was expected for his ten days’ holiday, 
and for a week we discussed little else. Though 


48 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


he had written saying when he would sail for 
Dundee, there was quite a possibility of his ap- 
pearing on the brae at any moment, for he liked 
to take Jess and Leeby by surprise. Hendry 
there was no surprising, unless he was in the 
mood for it, and the coolness of him was one of 
Jess’s grievances. Just two years earlier Jamie 
came north a week before his time, and his father 
saw him from the window. Instead of crying out 
in amazement or hacking his face, for he was 
shaving at the time, Hendry calmly wiped his 
razor on the window-sill, and said — 

“ Ay, there’s Jamie.” 

Jamie was a little disappointed at being seen 
in this way, for he had been looking forward for 
four and forty hours to repeating the sensation 
of the year before. On that occasion he had got 
to the door unnoticed, where he stopped to listen. 
I daresay he checked his breath, the better to 
catch his mother’s voice, for Jess being an invalid, 
Jamie thought of her first He had Leeby sworn 
to write the truth about her, but many an 
anxious hour he had on hearing that she was 
"complaining fell (considerably) about her back 


THE SON FROM LONDNO. 149 

the day,” Leeby, as he knew, being frightened to 
alarm him. Jamie, too, had given his promise to 
tell exactly how he was keeping, but often he 
wrote that he was “fine” when Jess had her 
doubts. When Hendry wrote he spread himself 
over the table, and said that Jess was “juist about 
it,” or “aff and on,” which does not tell much. 
So Jamie hearkened painfully at the door, and by 
and by heard his mother say to Leeby that she 
was sure the teapot was running out. Perhaps 
that voice was as sweet to him as the music of 
a maiden to her lover, but Jamie did not rush 
into his mother’s arms. Jess has told me with a 
beaming face how craftily he behaved. The old 
man, of lungs that shook Thrums by night, who 
went from door to door selling firewood, had a 
way of shoving doors rudely open and crying — 

“ Ony rozetty roots and him Jamie imitated. 

“Juist think,” Jess said, as she recalled the 
incident, “what a startle we got. As we think, 
Pete kicks open the door and cries oot, ‘Ony 
rozetty roots and Leeby says ‘No,’ and gangs 
to shut the door. Next minute she screeches, 
‘ What, what, what I ’ and in walks Jamie ! ” 


ISO A WJND014 fN THRUMS, 

Jess was never able ;o decide whether it was 
more delightful to be iaken aback in this way or 
to prepare for Jamie. Sudden excitement was 
bad for her according to Hendry, who got his 
medical knowledge second-hand from persons 
under treatment, but with Jamie’s appearance 
on the threshold Jess’s health began to improve. 
This time he kept to the appointed day, and the 
house was turned upside down in his honour. 
Such a polish did Leeby put on the flagons 
which hung on the kitchen wall, that, passing 
between them and the window, I thought once 
I had been struck by lightning. On the morning 
of the day that was to bring him, Leeby was up 
at two o’clock, and eight hours before he could 
possibly arrive Jess had a night-shirt warming for 
him at the fire. I was no longer anybody, 
except as a person who could give Jamie advice. 
Jess told me what I was to say. The only thing 
le and his mother quarrelled about was the 
inderclothing she would swaddle him in, and 
Jess asked me to back her up in her en- 
treaties. 

“ There’s no a doubt,” she said, “ but what it’s 


THE SON FROM LONDON 151 

a liantle caulder here than in London, an’ it 
would be a terrible business if he was to tak the 
cauld.” 

Jamie was to sail from London to Dundee, 
and come on to Thrums from Tilliedrum in the 
post-cart. The road at that time, however, 
avoided the brae, and at a certain point Jamie’s 
custom was to alight, and take the short cut 
home, along a farm road and up the commonty. 
Here, too. Hookey Crewe, the post, deposited his 
passenger’s box, which Hendry wheeled home in 
a barrow. Long before the cart had lost sight 
of Tilliedrum, Jess was at her window. 

“Tell her Hookey’s often late on Monundays,” 
I^eeby whispered to me, “for she’ll gang oot o’ 
her mind if she thinks there’s onything wrang.” 

Soon Jess was painfully excited, though she sat 
as still as salt. 

“It maun be yer time,” she said, looking at 
both Leeby and me, for in Thrums we went out 
and met our friends. 

“ Hoots,” retorted Leeby, trying to be hardy, 
“ Hookey canna be oot o’ Tilliedrum yet.” 

“ He maun hae startit lang syne.” 


152 


. A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


“ I wonder at ye, mother, puttin’ yersel in sic a 
state. Ye’ll be ill when he comes.” 

“ Na, am no in nae state, Leeby, but there’ll 
no be nae accident, will there } ” 

“ It’s most provokin’ ’at ye will think ’at every 
time Jamie steps into a machine there’ll be an ac- 
cident Am sure if ye would tak mair after my 
father, it would be a blessin’. Look hoo cool he 
is.” 

“ Whaur is he, Leeby ? ” 

“ Oh, I dinna ken. The henmost time I saw 
him he was lay in’ doon the law aboot something 
to T’nowhead.” 

“ It’s an awfu’ wy that he has o’ ga’en oot 
withoot a word. I wouldna wonder ’at he’s no 
bein’ in time to meet Jamie, an’ that would be a 
pretty business.” 

“O ye’re sure he’ll be in braw time.” 

“ But he hasna ta’en the barrow wi’ him, an’ 
hoo is Jamie’s luggage to be brocht up withoot a 
barrow } ” 

“ Barrow ! He took the barrow to the saw-mill 
an hour syne to pick it up at Rob Angus’s on the 
wy.” 


THE SON FROM LONDON. 


153 


Several times Jess was sure she saw the cart in 
the distance, and implored us to be off. 

“ I’ll tak no settle till ye’re awa,” she said, her 
face now flushed and her hands working nervously. 

“ We’ve time to gang and come twa or three 
times yet,” remonstrated Leeby ; but Jess gave 
me so beseeching a look that I put on my hat. 
Then Hendry dandered in to change his coat 
deliberately, and when the three of us set off, we 
left Jess with her eye on the door by which Jamie 
must enter. He was her only son now, and she 
had not seen him for a year. 

On the way down the commonty, Leeby had 
the honour of being twice addressed as Miss 
McQumpha, but her father was Hendry to all, 
which show's that we make our social position for 
ourselves. Hendry looked forward to Jamie’s 
annual appearance only a little less hungrily than 
Jess, but his pulse still beat regularly. Leeby 
would have considered it almost wicked to talk 
of anything except Jamie now, but Hendry cried 
out comments on the tatties, yesterday’s roup, the 
fall in jute, to everybody he encountered. When 
he and a crony had their say and parted, it w'as 


154 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


their custom to continue the conversation in 
shouts until they were out of hearing. 

Only to Jess at her window was the cart late 
that afternoon. Jamie jumped from it in the 
long great- coat that had been new to Thrums 
the year before, and Hendry said calmly — 

“Ay, Jamie.” 

Leeby and Jamie made signs that they recog- 
nized each other as brother and sister, but I was 
the only one with whom he shook hands. He 
was smart in his movements and quite the 
gentleman, but the Thrums ways took hold of 
him again at once. He even inquired for his 
mother in a tone that was meant to deceive me 
into thinking he did not care how she was. 

Hendry would have had a talk out of him on 
the spot, but was reminded of the luggage. We 
took the heavy farm road, and soon we were 
at the saw-mill. I am naturally leisurely, but 
we climbed the commonty at a stride. Jamie 
pretended to be calm, but in a dark place I saw 
him take Leeby’s hand, and after that he said 
not a word. His eyes were fixed on the elbow of 
the brae, where he would come into sight of his 


THE SON FROM LONDON, 


155 


mother’s window. Many, many a time, I know, 
that lad had prayed to God for still another sight 
of thi window with his mother at it. So we 
came to the corner where the stile is that Sam’l 
Dickie jumped in the race for T’nowhead’s Bell, 
and before Jamie was the house of his childhood 
and his mother’s window, and the fond, anxious 
face of his mother herself. My eyes are dull, 
and I did not see her, but suddenly Jamie cried 
out, “ My mother ! ” and Leeby and I were left 
behind. When I reached the kitchen Jess was 
crying, and her son’s arms were round her neck. 
I went away to my attic. 

There was only one other memorable event 
of that day. Jamie had finished his tea, and we 
all sat round him, listening to his adventures and 
opinions. He told us how the country should be 
governed, too, and perhaps put on airs a little. 
Hendry asked the questions, and Jamie answered 
them as pat as if he and his father were going 
through the Shorter Catechism. When Jamie told 
anything marvellous, as how many towels were 
used at the shop in a day, or that twopence was 
the charge for a single shave, his father screwed 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


156 

his mouth together as if preparing to whistle, and 
then instead made a curious clucking noise with 
his tongue, which was reserved for the expression 
of absolute amazement. As for Jess, who was 
given to making much of me, she ignored my 
remarks and laughed hilariously at jokes of 
Jamie’s which had been received in silence from 
me a few minutes before. 

Slowly it came to me that Leeby had something 
on her mind, and that Jamie was talking to her 
with his eyes. I learned afterwards that they 
were plotting how to get me out of the kitchen, 
but were too impatient to wait. Thus it was that 
the great event happened in my presence. Jamie 
rose and stood near Jess — I daresay he had 
planned the scene frequently. Then he produced 
from his pocket a purse, and coolly opened it. # 
Silence fell upon us as we saw that purse. From 
it he took a neatly-folded piece of paper, crumpled 
it into a ball, and flung it into Jess’s lap. 

I cannot say whether Jess knew what it was. 
Her hand shook, and for a moment she let the ball 
of paper lie there. 

“ Open’t up,” cried Leeby, who was in the secret. 


THE SON FROM LONDON 


>57 


“ What is’t ? ” asked Hendry, drawing nearer. 

"It’s juist a bit paper Jamie flung at me,’* said 
Jess, and then she unfolded it. 

" It’s a five-pound note ! ” cried Hendry, 

" Na, na ; oh keep us, no,” said Jess ; but she 
knew it was. 

For a time she could not speak. 

" I canna tak it, Jamie,” she faltered at last. 

"But Jamie waved his hand, meaning that it 
was nothing, and then, lest he should burst, 
hurried out into the garden, where he walked up 
and down whistling. May God bless the lad, 
thought I. I do not know the history of that 
five-pound note, but well aware I am that it grew 
slowly out of pence and silver, and that Jamie 
denied his passions many things for this great 
hour. His sacrifices watered his young heart and 
kept it fresh and tender. Let us no longer cheat 
our consciences by talking of filthy lucre. Money 
may always be a beautiful thing. It is we vrho 
make it grimy. 


CHAPTER XVIL 


A HOME FOR GENIUSES. 

From hints he had let drop at odd times I knew 
that Tammas Haggart had a scheme for geniuses, 
but not until the evening after Jamie’s arrival did 
I get it out of him. Hendry was with Jamie at 
the fishing, and it came about that Tammas and 
I had the pig-sty to ourselves. 

“ Of course,” he said, when we had got a grip of 
the subject, “ I dount pretend as my ideas is to be 
followed withoot deeviation, but ondootedly some- 
thing should be done for geniuses, them bein’ aboot 
the only class as we do naething for. Yet they’re 
fowk to be prood o’, an’ we should na let them 
overdo the thing, nor run into debt ; na, na. 
There was Robbie Burns, noo, as real a genius 


as ever — 


A HOME FOR GENIUSES. 


*59 


At the pig-sty, where we liked to have more 
than one topic, we had frequently to tempt 
Tammas away from Burns. 

“Your scheme,” I interposed, “is for living 
geniuses, of course } ** 

“Ay,” he said, thoughtfully, “them *at*s gone 
canna be brocht back. Weel, my idea is *at a 
Home should be built for geniuses at the public 
expense, whaur they could all live thegither, an 
be decently looked after. Na, no in London ; 
that’s no my plan, but I would hae’t within an 
hour’s distance o’ London, say five mile frae the 
market-place, an’ standin’ in a bit garden, whaur 
the geniuses could walk aboot arm-in-arm, com- 
posin’ their minds.” 

“ You would have the grounds walled in, I sup- 
pose, so that the public could not intrude ?” 

“Weel, there’s a difficulty there, because, ye’ll 
observe, as the public would support the insti- 
tootion, they would hae a kind o’ richt to look in. 
How-some-ever, I daur say we could arrange to 
fling the grounds open to the public once a week 
on condition 'at they didna speak to the geniuses. 
I’m thinkin’ ’at if there was a small chairge for 


i6o A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 

admission the Home could be made self-supportin\ 
Losh I to think ’at if there had been sic an insti- 
tootion in his time a man micht hae sat on the bit 
dyke and watched Robbie Burns danderin’ roond 
the 

“You would divide the Home into suites of 
rooms, so that every inmate would have his own 
apartments ? ’* 

“ Not by no means ; na, na. The mair I read 
aboot geniuses the mair clearly I see as their wy 
o’ living alane ower muckle is ane o’ the things as 
breaks doon their health, and makes them meeser- 
able. I’ the Home they would hae a bedroom 
apiece, but the parlour an’ the other sittin’-rooms 
would be for all, so as they could enjoy ane 
another’s company. The management } Oh, 
that’s aisy. The superintendent would be a 
medical man appointed by Parliament, and he 
would hae men-servants to do his biddin’.” 

“ Not all men-servants, surely ? ” 

“ Every one o’ them. Man, geniuses is no to be 
trusted wi’ womenfolk. No, even Robbie Bu ” 

“ So he did ; but would the inmates have to put 
themselves entirely in the superintendent’s hands ? ” 


A HOME FOR GENIUSES. i6i 

** Nae doubt ; an’ they would see it was the wisest 
thing they could do. He would be careful o* their 
health, an* send them early to bed as weel as hae 
them up at eight sharp. Geniuses’ healths is 
always breakin’ doon because of late hours, as in 
the case o’ the lad wha used often to begin his im- 
mortal writin’s at twal o’clock at nicht, a thing ’at 
would ruin ony constitootion. But the superin- 
tendent would see as they had a tasty supper at 
nine o’clock — something as agreed wi’ them. 
Then for half an hour they would quiet their brains 
readin’ oot aloud, time about, frae sic a book as 
the ** Pilgrim’s Progress,” an’ the gas would be 
turned aff at ten precisely.” 

“ When would you have them up in the morn- 
ing ? ” 

“ At sax in summer an’ seven in winter. The 
superintendent would see as they were all properly 
bathed every mornin’, cleanliness bein’ most im- 
portant for the preservation o’ health.” 

" This sounds well ; but suppose a genius broke 
the rules — lay in bed, for instance, reading by the 
light of a candle after hours, or refused to take hi 
bath in the morning ? ” 


12 


i63 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


“The superintendent would hae to punish him. 
The genius would be sent back to his bed, maybe. 
An’ if he lay lang i’ the mornin’ he would hae to 
gang withoot his breakfast.” 

“ That would be all very well where the inmate 
only broke the regulations once in a way ; but 
suppose he were to refuse to take his bath day 
after day (and, you know, geniuses are said to be 
eccentric in that particular), what would be done ? 
You could not starve him ; geniuses are too 
scarce.” 

“ Na, na ; in a case like that he would hae to be 
reported to the public. The thing would hae to 
come afore the Hoose of Commons. Ay, the 
superintendent would get a member o* the Oppo- 
seetion to ask a queistion such as ‘ Can the honour- 
able gentleman, the Secretary of State for Home 
Affairs, inform the Hoose whether it is a fac that 
Mr. Sic-a-one, the well-known genius, at present 
resident in the Home for Geniuses, has, contrairy 
to regulations, perseestently and obstinately refused 
to change his linen; and, if so, whether the Govern- 
ment proposes to take ony steps in the matter } ’ 
The newspapers would report the discussion next 


A HOME FOR GENIUSES, 163 

mornin’, an* so it would be made public withoot 
onnecessary ootlay.” 

“ In a general way, however, you would give the 
geniuses perfect freedom ? They could work when 
they liked, and come and go when they liked ? ** 

“Not so. The superintendent would fix the 
hours o’ wark, an’ they would all write, or what- 
ever it was, thegither in one large room. Man, 
man, it would mak a grand draw for a painter- 
chield, that room, wi* all the geniuses working awa’ 
thegither.” 

“ But when the labours of the day were over the 
genius would be at liberty to make calls by him- 
self or to run up, say, to London for an hour or 
two?” 

“Hoots no, that would spoil everything. It*s 
the drink, ye see, as does for a terrible lot o* 
geniuses. Even Rob ” 

“ Alas ! yes. But would you have them all 
teetotalers ? ” 

“ What do ye tak me for ? Na, na ; the super- 
intendent would allow them one glass o* toddy 
every nicht, an’ mix it himsel ; but he would never 
get the keys o’ the press, whaur he kept the drink, 


i 64 a window in THRUMS, 

oot o* his hands. They would never be allowed 
oot o* the gairden either, withoot a man to look 
after them ; an’ I wouldna burthen them wi’ ower 
muckle pocket-money. Saxpence in the week 
would be suflfeecient.” 

“ How about their clothes ? ” 

“They would get twa suits a year, wi’ the letter 
G sewed on the shoulders, so as if they were lost 
they could be recognized and brocht back.” 

“Certainly it is a scheme deserving considera- 
tion, and I have no doubt our geniuses would 
jump at it ; but you must remember that some of 
them would have wives.” 

“Ay, an’ some o’ them would hae husbands. 
I’ve been thinkin’ that oot, an’ I daur say the best 
plan would be to partition aff a pairt o’ the Home 
for female geniuses.” 

“ Would Parliament elect the members ? ” 

“ I wouldna trust them. The election would 
hae to be by competitive examination. Na, I 
canna say wha would draw up the queistions. The 
scheme’s juist growin’ i’ my mind, but the mair I 
think o’t the better I like it” 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


LEEBY AND JAMIE. 

By the bank of the Quharity on a summer day I 
have seen a barefooted girl gaze at the running 
water until tears filled her eyes. That was the 
birth of romance. Whether this love be but a 
beautiful dream I cannot say, but this we see, that 
it comes to all, and colours the whole future life 
with gold. Leeby must have dreamt it, but I did 
not know her then. I have heard of a man who 
would have taken her far away into a county 
where the corn is yellow when it is still green with 
us, but she would not leave her mother, nor was it 
him she saw in her dream. From her earliest days, 
when she was still a child staggering round the 
garden with Jamie in her arms, her duty lay before 
her, straight as the burying-ground road. Jess had 


i66 


A WINDO IV JN THRUMS, 


need of her in the little home at the top of th© 
brae, where God, looking down upon her as she 
scrubbed and gossipped and sat up all night with 
her ailing mother, and never missed the prayer- 
meeting, and adored the minister, did not perhaps 
think her the least of His handmaids. Her years 
were less than thirty when He took her away, but 
she had few days that were altogether dark. Those 
who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot 
keep it from themselves. 

The love Lee by bore for Jamie was such that 
in their younger days it shamed him. Other laddies 
knew of it, and flung it at him until he dared 
Leeby to let on in publiq that he and she were 
related. 

“ Hoo is your lass ? ” they used to cry to him, 
inventing a new game. 

“ I saw Leeby lookin’ for ye,” they would say ; 
“ she’s wearyin’ for ye to gang an’ play wi’ her.” 

Then if they were not much bigger boys than 
himself, Jamie got them against the dyke and hit 
them hard until they publicly owned to knowing 
that she was his sister, and that he was not fond ol 
her. 


LEEBY AND JAMIE, 


167 


“ It distressed him mair than ye could believe, 
though,” Jess has told me ; an’ when he came 
hame he would greet an’ say ’at Leeby disgraced 
him.” 

Leeby, of course, suffered for her too obvious 
affection. 

" I wonder ’at ye dinna try to control yersel,” 
Jamie would say to her, as he grew bigger. 

“ Am sure,” said Leeby, " I never gie ye a look 
if there’s onybody there.” 

” A look ! You’re ay lookin’ at me sae fond-like 
’at I dinna ken what wy to turn.” 

** Weel, I canna help it,” said Leeby, probably 
beginning to whimper. 

If Jamie was in a very bad temper he left her, 
after this, to her own reflections ; but he was 
naturally soft-hearted; 

“ Am no tellin’ ye no to care for me,” he told 
her, “but juist to keep it mair to yersel. Nae- 
body would ken frae me ’at am fond o’ ye.” 

“ Mebbe yer no ? ” said Leeby. 

“Ay, am I, but I can keep it secret. When 
we’re in the hoose am juist richt fond o’ ye*” 

“ Do ye love me, Jamie ? ” 


i68 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


Jamie waggled his head in irritation. 

“ Love,” he said, “ is an awful like word to use 
when fowk’s week Ye shouldna spier sic annoyin’ 
queistions.” 

“But if ye juist say ye love me I’ll never let on 
again afore fowk ’at yer onything to me ava.” 

“ Ay, ye often say that.” 

“ Do ye no believe my word ” 

“ I believe fine ye mean what ye say, but ye 
forget yersel when the time comes.” 

“Juist try me this time.” 

“ Weel, then, I do.” 

“ Do what } ” asked the greedy Leeby. 

“What ye said.” 

“ I said love.” 

“ Weel,” said Jamie, “ I do’t.” 

“ What do ye do? Say the word.” 

“Na,” said Jamie, " I winna say the word. It’s 
no a word to say, but I do’t.” 

That was all she could get out of him, unless he 
was stricken with remorse, when he even went the 
length of saying the word. 

“Leeby kent perfectly weel,” Jess has said, “’at 
it was a trial to Jamie to tak her ony gait, an’ I 


LEEBY AND JAMIE. 


169 


often used to say to her *at I wondered at her 
want o* pride in priggin’ wi’ him. Ay, but if she 
could juist get a promise wrung oot o’ him, she 
didna care hoo muckle she had to prig. Syne 
they quarrelled, an’ ane or baith o’ them grat 
(cried) afore they made it up. I mind when Jamie 
went to the fishin’ Leeby was aye terrible keen to 
get wi’ him, but ye see he wouldna be seen gaen 
through the toon wi’ her. ‘ If ye let me gang,’ she 
said to him, ‘ I’ll no seek to go through the toon 
wi’ ye. Na, I’ll gang roond by the Roods an’ you 
can tak the buryin’-ground road, so as we can 
meet on the hill.’ Yes, Leeby was willin’ to agree 
wi’ a’ that, juist to get gaen wi’ him. I’ve seen 
lassies makkin’ themsels sma’ for lads often enough, 
but I never saw ane ’at prigged so muckle wi’ her 
ain brother. Na, it’s other lassies’ brothers they 
like as a fule.” 

" But though Jamie was terrible reserved aboot 
it,” said Leeby, “ he was as fond o’ me as ever I 
was o’ him. Ye mind the time I had the measles, 
mother ? ” 

“Am no likely to forget it, Leeby,” said Jess, 
an’ you blind wi’ them for three days. Ay, ay, 


170 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


Jamie was richt taen up aboot ye. 1 mind he 
broke open his pirly (money-box), an’ bocht a 
ha’penny worth o’ something to ye every day/* 

“ An’ ye hinna forgotten the stick ? ” 

***Deed no, I hinna. Ye see,” Jess explained to 
me, “ Leeby was lyin’ ben the hoose, an’ Jamie 
wasna allowed to gang near her for fear o’ infection. 
Weel, he got a lang stick — it was a pea-stick — an’ 
put it ’aneath the door an’ waggled it. Ay, he did 
that a curran times* every day, juist to let her see 
he was thinkin’ o’ her.” 

Mair than that,” said Leeby, “ he cried oot *at 
he loved me.” 

“Ay, but juist aince,” Jess said, I dinna mind 
o’t but aince. It was the time the doctor came 
late, an’ Jamie, being waukened by him, thocht ye 
was deein*. I mind as if it was yesterday hoo he 
cam runnin’ to the door an’ cried oot, ‘ I do love 
ye, Leeby; I love ye richt’ The doctor got a 
start when he heard the voice, but he laughed loud 
when he unerstood.” 

“ He had nae business, though,” said Leeby, “ to 
tell onybody.” 

“He was a rale clever man, the doctor,” Jess 


LEEBY AND JAMIE. 


171 


explained to me, **ay, he kent me as weel as 
though he’d gaen through me wi’ a lichted candle. 
It got oot through him, an’ the young billies took 
to say in’ to Jamie, ‘ Ye do love her, Jamie ; ay, ye 
love her richt.’ The only reglar fecht I ever kent 
Jamie hae was wi’ a lad ’at cried that to him. It 
was Bowlegs Christy’s laddie. Ay, but when she 
got better Jamie blamed Leeby.” 

" He no only blamed me,” said Leeby, “ but he 
wanted me to pay him back a’ the bawbees he 
had spent on me.” 

** Ay, an’ I sepad he got them too,” said Jess. 

In time Jamie became a barber in Tilliedrum, 
trudging many heavy miles there and back twice 
a day that he might sleep at home, trudging 
bravely I was to say, but it was what he was born 
to, and there was hardly an alternative. This was 
the time I saw most of him, and he and Leeby 
were often in my thoughts. There is as terrible 
a bubble in the little kettle as on the cauldron 
of the world, and some of the scenes between 
Jamie and Leeby were great tragedies, comedies, 
what you will, until the kettle was taken off the 
fire. Hers was the more placid temper; indeed, 


172 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


only in one way could Jamie suddenly rouse her 
to fury. That was when he hinted that she had a 
large number of frocks. Leeby knew that there 
could never be more than a Sabbath frock and an 
everyday gown for her, both of her mother’s 
making, but Jamie’s insinuations were more than 
she could bear. Then I have seen her seize and 
shake him. I know from Jess that Leeby cried 
herself hoarse the day Joey was buried, because her 
little black frock was not ready for wear. 

Until he went to Tilliedrum Jamie had been more 
a stay-at-home boy than most. The warmth of 
Jess’s love had something to do with keeping his 
heart aglow, but more, I think, he owed to Leeby. 
Tilliedrum was his introduction to the world, and 
for a little it took his head. I was in the house the 
Sabbath day that he refused to go to church. 

He went out in the forenoon to meet the Tillie- 
drum lads, who were to take him off for a holiday 
in a cart. Hendry was more wrathful than I re- 
member ever to have seen him, though I have 
heard how he did with the lodger who broke the 
Lord’s Day. This lodger was a tourist who thought, 
in folly surely rather than in hardness of heart, to 


LEEBY AND JAMIE, 


173 


test the religious convictions of an Auld Licht by 
insisting on paying his bill on a Sabbath morning. 
He offered the money to Jess, with the warning 
that if she did not take it now she might never see 
it Jess was so kind and good to her lodgers that 
he could not have known her long who troubled 
her with this poor trick. She was sorely in need 
at the time, and entreated the thoughtless man to 
have some pity on her. 

“ Now or never,’* he said, holding out the money. 

“Put it on the dresser,” said Jess at last, “an’ 
I’ll get it the morn.” 

The few shillings were laid on the dresser, where 
they remained unfingered until Hendry, with Leeby 
and Jamie, came in from church. 

“ What siller’s that ? ” asked Hendry, and then 
Jess confessed what she had done. 

“ I wonder at ye, woman,” said Hendry, sternly ; 
and lifting the money he climbed up to the attic 
with it. ^ 

He pushed open the door, and confronted the 
lodger. 

“ Take back yer siller,” he said, laying it on the 
table, “ an ’leave my hoose. Man, you’re a pitiable 


174 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


crittur to tak the chance, when I was oot, o’ 
playin’ upon the poverty o’ an onwcel woman.” 

It was with such unwonted severity as this that 
Hendry called upon Jamie to follow him to church ; 
but the boy went off, and did not return till dusk, 
defiant and miserable. Jess had been so terrified 
that she forgave him everything for sight of his 
face, and Hendry prayed for him at family worship 
with too much unction. But Leeby cried as if her 
tender heart would break. For a long time Jamie 
refused to look at her, but at last he broke 
down. 

“ If ye go on like that,” he said, “ I’ll gang awa 
oot an’ droon mysel, or be a sojer.” 

This was no uncommon threat of his, and 
sometimes, when he went off, banging the door 
violently, she ran after him and brought him back. 
This time she only wept the ^ore, and so both 
went to bed in misery. It was after midnight that 
Jamie rose and crept to Leeby ’s bedside. Leeby 
was shaking the bed in her agony. Jess heard 
what they said. 

“ Leeby,” said Jamie, “ dinna greet, an’ I’ll never 
do’t again.” 


LEEBY AND JAMIE, 175 

He put his arms round her, and she kissed him 
passionately. 

“Oh, Jamie,” she said, “hae ye prayed to God 
to forgie ye ? ” 

Jamie did not speak. 

“ If ye was to die this nicht,” cried Leeby, “ an’ 
you no made it up wi’ God, ye wouldna gang to 
heaven. Jamie, I canna sleep till ye’ve made it up 
wi’ God.” 

But Jamie still hung back. Leeby slipped from 
her bed, and went down on her knees. 

“ O God, O dear God,” she cried, “ mak Jamie 
to pray to you ! ” 

Then Jamie went down on his knees too, and 
they made it up with God together. 

This is a little thing for me to remember all 
these years, and yet how fresh and sweet it keeps 
Leeby in my memory. 

Away up in the glen, my lonely schoolhouse 
lying deep, as one might say, in a sea of snow', 1 
had many hours in the years long by for thinking 
of my friends in Thrums and mapping out the 
future of Leeby and Jamie. I saw Hendry and 
Jess taken to the churchyard, and Leeby left 


176 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


alone in the house. I saw Jamie fulfil his promise 
to his mother, and take Leeby, that stainless young 
woman, far away to London, where they had a 
home together. Ah, but these were only the idle 
dreams of a dominie. The Lord willed it other- 
wise. 


CHAPTER XIX. 


A TALE OF A GLOVE. 

So long as Jamie was not the lad, Jess twinkled 
gleefully over tales of sweethearting. There was 
little Kitty Lamby who used to skip in of an 
evening, and, squatting on a stool near the window 
unwind the roll of her enormities. A wheedling 
thing she was, with an ambition to drive men 
crazy, but my presence killed the gossip on her 
tongue, though I liked to look at her. When I 
entered, the wag at the wa* clock had again pos- 
session of the kitchen. 1 never heard more than 
the end of a sentence : 

“ An’ did he really say he would fling himsel into 
the dam, Kitty ? ” 

Or — “True as death, Jess, he kissed me.” 

Then I wandered away from the kitchen, where 
I was not wanted, and marvelled to know that Jess 
IS 


178 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


of the tender heart laughed most merrily when he 
really did say that he was going straight to the 
dam. As no body was found in the dam in those 
days, whoever he was he must have thought better 
of it. 

But let Kitty, or any other maid, cast a glinting 
eye on Jamie, then Jess no longer smiled. If he 
returned the glance she sat silent in her chair till 
Leeby laughed away her fears. 

“Jamie’s no the kind, mother,” Leeby would say. 
“ Na, he’s quiet, but he sees through them. They 
dinna draw his leg (get over him).” 

“Ye never can tell, Leeby. The laddies ’at’s 
maist ill to get sometimes gangs up in a flame a’ 
at aince, like a bit o’ paper.” 

“ Ay, weel, at ony rate Jamie’s no on fire yet.” 

Though clever beyond her neighbours, Jess lost 
all her sharpness if they spoke of a lassie for Jamie. 

“ I warrant,” Tibbie Birse said one day in my 
hearing, “’at there’s some leddy in London he’s 
thinkin’ o’. Ay, he’s been a guid laddie to ye, but 
i’ the coorse o* nature he’ll be settlin’ dune soon.” 

Jess did not answer, but she was a picture of 


woe. 


A TALE OF A GLOVE, 


179 


“ Yer lettin* what Tibbie Birse said lie on yer 
mind,” Leeby remarked, when Tibbie was gone. 
“ What can it maiter what she thinks ? ” 

"I canna help it, Leeby,” said Jess. ** Na, an’ 
I canna bear to think o’ Jamie bein’ mairit. It 
would lay me low to loss my laddie. No yet, no 
yet.” 

“ But, mother,” said Leeby, quoting from the 
minister at weddings, “ ye wouldna be lossin’ a son, 
but juist gainin’ a dochter.” 

“ Dinna haver, Leeby,” answered Jess, want 
nane o’ thae dochters ; na, na.” 

This talk took place while we were still awaiting 
Jamie’s coming. He had only been with us one 
day when Jess made a terrible discovery. She was 
looking so mournful when I saw her, that I asked 
Leeby what was wrong. 

“ She’s brocht it on hersel,” said Leeby. “Ye 
see she was up sune i’ the mornin’ to begin to the 
darnin’ o’ Jamie’s stockins an’ to warm his sark at 
the fire afore he put it on. He woke up, an’ cried 
to her ’at he wasna accustomed to hae’n his things 
warmed for him. Ay, he cried it oot fell thrawn, 
so she took it into her head ’at there was something 


i8o A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 

in his pouch he didna want her to see. She was 
even onaisy last nicht” 

I asked what had aroused Jess’s suspicions last 
night. 

“Ou, ye would notice ’at she sat devourin’ him 
wi’ her een, she was so lifted up at ha’en ’im again. 
Weel, she says noo ’at she saw ’im twa or three 
times put his hand in his pouch as if he was findin’ 
to mak sure ’at something was safe. So when he 
fell asleep again this mornin’ she got baud o’ his 
jacket to see if there was ony thing in’t. I advised 
her no to do’t, but she couldna help hersel. She 
put in her hand, an’ pu’d it oot. That’s what’s 
makkin’ her look sae ill.” 

“ But what was it she found 

" Did I no tell ye ? I’m ga’en dottle, I think. 
It was a glove, a woman’s glove, in a bit 
paper. Ay, though she’s sittin’ still she’s near 
frantic.” 

I said I supposed Jess had put the glove back in 
Jamie’s pocket. 

“ Na,” said Leeby, “ ’deed no. She wanted to 
fling it on the back o’ the fire, but I wouldna let 


A TALE OF A GLOVE. 


iSi 


Later in the day I remarked to Leeby that 
Jamie was very dull. 

“ He’s missed it,” she explained. 

“ Has any one mentioned it to him,” I asked, “ or 
has he inquired about it ? ” 

“Na,” said Leeby, ‘‘there hasna been a syllup 
(syllable) aboot it. My mother’s fleid to mention’t, 
an’ he doesna like to speak aboot it either.” 

“ Perhaps he thinks he has lost it ? ” 

“ Nae fear o’ him,” Leeby said. “ Na, he kens 
fine wha has’t.” 

I never knew how Jamie came by the glove, nor 
whether it had originally belonged to her who 
made him forget the window at the top of the 
brae. At the time I looked on as at play-acting, 
rejoicing in the happy ending. Alas ! in the real life 
how are we to know when we have reached an end? 

But this glove, I say, may not have been that 
woman’s, and if it was, she had not then bedevilled 
him. He was too sheepish to demand it back from 
his mother, and already he cared for it too much to 
laugh at Jess’s theft with Leeby. So it was that 
a curious game at chess was played with the glove, 
the players a silent pair. 


i 82 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


Jamie cared little to read books, but on the day 
following Jess’s discovery, I found him on his knees 
in the attic, looking through mine. A little box, 
without a lid, held them all, but they seemed a 
great library to him. 

“ There’s readin’ for a lifetime in them,” he said. 
** I was juist takkin’ a look through them.” 

His face was guilty, however, as if his hand had 
been caught in a money-bag, and I wondered what 
had enticed the lad to my books. I was still 
standing pondering when Leeby ran up the stair ; 
she was so active that she generally ran, and she 
grudged the time lost in recovering her breath. 

“ I’ll put yer books richt,” she said, making her 
word good as she spoke. “I kent Jamie had been 
ransackin’ up here, though he came up rale canny. 
Ay, ye would notice he was in his stockin’ 
soles.” 

I had not noticed this, but I remembered now 
his slipping from the room very softly. If he 
wanted a book, I told Leeby, he could have got it 
without any display of cunning. 

“It’s no a book he’s lookin’ for,” she said, “na, 
it’s his glove.” 


A TALE OF A GLOVE, 183 

The time of day was early for Leeby to 
gossip, but I detained her for a moment. 

“My mother’s hodded (hid) it,” she explained, 
“ an’ he winna speir nae queistions. But he’s 
lookin’ for’t. He was ben in the room searchin’ 
the drawers when I was up i’ the toon in the fore- 
noon. Ye see he pretends no to be carin’ afore me, 
an’ though my mother’s sittin’ sae quiet-like at the 
window she’s hearkenin’ a’ the time. Ay, an’ he 
thocht I had hod it up here.” 

But where, I asked, was the glove hid. 

“ I ken nae mair than yersel,” said Leeby. “ My 
mother’s gien to hoddin’ things. She has a place 
aneath the bed whaur she keeps the siller, an’ she’s 
no speakin’ aboot the glove to me noo, because 
she thinks Jamie an’ me’s in comp (company). I 
speired at her whaur she had hod it, but she juist 
said, * What would I be doin’ hoddin’t ? ’ She’ll 
never admit to me ’at she hods the siller either.” 

Next day Leeby came to me with the latest 
news. 

“ He’s found it,” she said, “ ay, he’s got the glove 
again. Ye see what put him on the wrang scent 
was a notion ’at I had put it some gait. He kent 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


184 

’at if she’d hod it, the kitchen maun be the place, 
but he thocht she’d gi’en it to me to hod. He came 
upon’t by accident. It was aneath the paddin’ o’ 
her chair.” 

Here, I thought, was the end of the glove 
incident, but I was mistaken. There were no 
presses or drawers with locks in the house, and 
Jess got hold of the glove again. I suppose she 
had reasoned out no line of action. She merely 
hated the thought that Jamie should have a 
woman’s glove in his possession. 

“ She beats a’ wi’ ’cuteness,” Leeby said to me. 
“Jamie didna put the glove back in his pouch. 
Na, he kens her ower weel by this time. She was 
up, though, lang afore he was wauken, an’ she gaed 
almost strecht to the place whaur he had hod it. 
I believe she lay waukin a’ nicht thinkin’ oot whaur 
it would be. Ay, it was aneath the mattress. I saw 
her hodden’t i’ the back o’ the drawer, but I didna 
let on.” 

I quite believed Leeby when she told me after- 
wards that she had watched Jamie feeling beneath 
the mattress. 

“ He had a face,” she said, “ I assure ye, he had 


A TALE OF A GLOVE. 


185 


a face, when he discovered the glove was gone 
again.” 

“ He maun be terrible ta’en up aboot it,” Jess 
said to Leeby, “ or he wouldna keep it aneath the 
mattress.” 

“ Od,” said Leeby, ** it was yersel *at drove him 
to’t.” 

Again Jamie recovered his property, and again 
Jess got hold of it. This time he looked in vain. 
I learnt the fate of the glove from Leeby. 

“ Ye mind ’at she keepit him at hame frae the 
kirk on Sabbath, because he had a cauld ? ” Leeby 
said. “ Ay, me or my father would hae a gey ill 
cauld afore she would let’s bide at hame frae the 
kirk ; but Jamie’s different. Weel, mair than aince 
she’s been near speakin’ to ’im aboot the glove, but 
she grew fleid aye. She was sae terrified there 
was something in’t. 

“ On Sabbath, though, she had him to hersel, 
an’ he wasna so bright as usual. She sat wi’ 
the Bible on her lap, pretendin’ to read, but a’ 
the time she was takkin’ keeks (glances) at him, 
I dinna ken ’at he was broodin’ ower the glove, but 
she thocht he was, an’ juist afore the kirk came 


i86 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


oot she couldna stand it nae langer. She put her 
hand in her pouch, an* pu*d oot the glove, wi’ the 
paper round it, juist as it had been when she came 
upon’t. 

“ ‘That’s yours, Jamie,* she said ; ‘it was ill-dune 
o’ me to talc it, but I couldna help it.* 

“Jamie put oot his hand, an* syne he drew’t 
back. ‘ It*s no a thing o’ nae consequence, mother/ 
he said. 

“ ‘ Wha is she, Jamie ? * my mother said. 

“ He turned awa his heid — so she telt me. ‘ It’s 
a lassie in London,* he said, ‘ I dinna ken her 
muckle.* 

“‘Ye maun ken her weel,* my mother persisted, 
‘ to be carryin’ aboot her glove ; I’m dootin* yer gey 
fond o* her, Jamie ?* 

“ ‘ Na,* said Jamie, ‘ am no. There’s no naebody 
I care for like yersel, mother.* 

“ ‘ Ye wouldna carry aboot ony thing o* mine, 
Jamie/ my mother said ; but he says, ‘Oh, mother, 
I carry aboot yer face wi’ me aye ; an* sometimes at 
nicht I kind o* greet to think o* ye.* 

“ Ay, after that I’ve nae doot he was sittin* wi’ 
his airms aboot her. She didna tell me that, but 


A TALE OF A GLOVE. 


187 


weel he kens it’s what she likes, an’ she maks nae 
pretence o’ it’s no bein’. But for a* he said an’ did, 
she noticed him put the glove back in his inside 
pouch. 

“*It’s wrang o’ me, Jamie,’ she said, ‘but I 
canna bear to think o’ ye carry in’ that aboot sae 
carefu’i No, I canna help it.* 

“Weel, Jamie, the crittur, took it oot o* his 
pouch, an’ kind o’ hesitated. Syne he lays’t on 
the back o’ the fire, an’ they sat thegither glowerin’ 
at it 

“ ‘ Noo, mother,’ he says, ‘ youre satisfied, are ye 
no?’ 

“ Ay,” Leeby ended her story, “ she said she was 
satisfied. But she saw ’at he laid it on the fire fell 
fond-like.” 


CHAPTER XX. 


THE LAST NIGHT. 

“ JUIST another sax nichts, Jamie,” Jess would say, 
sadly. “Juist fower nichts noo, an* you’ll be 
awa.” Even as she spoke seemed to come the 
last night. 

The last night! Reserve slipped unheeded to 
the floor. Hendry wandered ben and but the 
house, and Jamie sat at the window holding his 
mother’s hand. You must walk softly now if you 
would cross that humble threshold. I stop at the 
door. Then, as now, I was a lonely man, and 
when the last night came the attic was the place 
for me. 

This family affection, how good and beautiful it 
is. Men and maids love, and after many years 
they may rise to this. It is the grand proof of the 


THE LAST NIGHT. 


189 


goodness in human nature, for it means that the 
more we see of each other the more we find that is 
lovable. If you would cease to dislike a man, try 
to get nearer his heart. 

Leeby had no longer any excuse for bustling 
about. Everything was ready — too soon. Hendry 
had been to the fish-cadger in the square to get a 
bervie for Jamie’s supper, and Jamie had eaten it, 
trying to look as if it made him happier. His 
little box was packed and strapped, and stood 
terribly conspicuous against the dresser. Jess had 
packed it herself. 

“Ye mauna trachle (trouble) yersel, mother,” 
Jamie said, when she had the empty box pulled 
toward her. 

Leeby was wiser. 

“ Let her do’t,” she whispered, “ it’ll keep her 
frae broodin’.” 

Jess tied ends of yarn round the stockings to 
keep them in a little bundle by themselves. So 
she did with all the other articles. 

“ No ’at it’s ony great affair,” she said, for on the 
last night they were all thirsting to do something 
for Jamie that would be a great affair to him. 


190 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


**Ah, ye would wonder, mother,” Jamie said, 
“ when I open my box an' find a’thing tied up wi* 
strings sae careful, it a* comes back to me wi’ a 
rush wha did it, an’ am as fond o’ thae strings as 
though they were a grand present. There’s the 
pocky (bag) ye gae me to keep sewin’ things in. I 
get the wifie I lodge wi’ to sew to me, but often 
when I come upon the pocky I sit an’ look at it.” 

Two chairs were backed to the fire, with under- 
clothing hanging upside down on them. From the 
string over the fireplace dangled two pairs of much- 
darned stockings. 

“ Ye’ll put on baith thae pair o’ stockin’s, Jamie,” 
said Jess, “juist to please me? ” 

When he arrived he had rebelled against the 
extra clothing. 

“ Ay, will I, mother ? ” he said now. 

Jess put her hand fondly through his ugly hair. 
How handsome she thought him. 

** Ye have a fine brow, Jamie,” she said. "I mind 
the day ye was born sayin’ to mysel ’at ye had a 
fine brow.” 

But ye thocht he was to be a lassie, mother,” 
said Leeby. 


THE LAST NIGHT 


191 

“ Na, Leeby, I didna. I kept sayin’ I thocht he 
would be a lassie because I was fleid he would be ; 
but a* the time I had a presentiment he would be 
a laddie. It was wi’ Joey deein’ sae sudden, an’ I 
took on sae terrible aboot ’im 'at I thocht all alang 
the Lord would gie me another laddie.” 

“ Ay, I wanted ’im to be a laddie mysel,” said 
Hendry, “ so as he could tak Joey’s place.” 

Jess’s head jerked back involuntarily, and Jamie 
may have felt her hand shake, for he said in a 
voice out of Hendry’s hearing — 

“ I never took Joey’s place wi’ ye, mother.” 

Jess pressed his hand tightly in her two worn 
palms, but she did not speak. 

“ Jamie was richt like Joey when he was a bairn,” 
Hendry said. 

Again Jess’s head moved, but still she was 
silent. 

“ They were sae like,” continued Hendry, ** ’at 
often I called Jamie by Joey’s name.” 

Jess looked at her husband, and her mouth 
opened and shut. 

“ I cacna mind ’at you ever did that ? ” Hendry 
said 


192 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


She shook her head. 

“ Na,” said Hendry, “ you never mixed them up, 
I dinna think ye ever missed Joey sae sair as I 
did.” 

Leeby went ben, and stood in the room in the 
dark ; Jamie knew why. 

“ I’ll just gang ben an’ speak to Lfeeby for a 
meenute,” he said to his mother ; “ I’ll no be lang.” 

‘‘Ay, do that, Jamie,” said Jess. “What 
Lecby’s been to me nae tongue can tell. Ye 
canna bear to hear me speak, I ken, o’ the time 
when Hendry an’ me’ll be awa, but, Jamie, when 
that time comes ye’ll no forget Leeby ? ” 

“I winna, - mother, I winna,” said Jamie. 
“There’ll never be a roof ower me ’at’s no hers 
too” 

He went ben and shut the door. I do not know 
what he and Leeby said. Many a time since their 
earliest youth had these two been closeted together, 
often to make up their little quarrels in each other’s 
arms. They remained a long time in the room, 
the shabby room of which Jess and Leeby were so 
proud, and whatever might be their fears about 
their mother they were not anxious for themselves. 


THE LAST NIGHT, 


193 


Leeby was feeling lusty and well, and she could 
not know that Jamie required to be reminded of 
his duty to the folk at home. Jamie would have 
laughed at the notion. Yet that woman in London 
must have been waiting for him even then. Leeby, 
who was about to die, and Jamie, who was to for- 
get his mother, came back to the kitchen with a 
happy light on their faces. I have with me still 
the look of love they gave each other before Jamie 
crossed over to Jess. 

“ Ye’ll gang anower, noo, mother,” Leeby said, 
meaning that it was Jess’s bed-time. 

“No yet, Leeby,” Jess answered, “I’ll sit up till 
the readin’s ower.” 

“ I think ye should gang, mother,” Jamie said, 
“ an’ I’ll come an’ sit aside ye after ye’re i’ yer 
bed.” 

“Ay, Jamie, I’ll no hae ye to sit aside me the 
morn’s nicht, an’ hap (cover) me wi’ the claes.” 

“ But ye’ll gang suner to yer bed, mother.” 

“I may gang, but I winna sleep. I’ll aye be 
thinkin’ o’ ye tossin’ on the sea. I pray for ye a 
lang time ilka nicht, Jamie.” 

“ Ay, I ken,” 


H 


194 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


“ An* I pictur ye ilka hour o’ the day. Ye never 
gang hame through thae terrible streets at nicht 
but I’m thinkin’ o’ ye.’* 

“ I would try no to be sae sad, mother,** said 
Leeby. “ We’ve ha’en a richt fine time, have we 
no?** 

“ It’s been an awfu’ happy time,” said Jess. 
“ We’ve ha’en a pleasantness in oor lives ’at comes 
to few. I ken naebody *at’s ha’en sae muckle 
happiness one wy or another.” 

“ It’s because ye’re sae guid, mother,” said Jamie. 

“Na, Jamie, am no guid ava. It’s because my 
fowk’s been sae guid, you an’ Hendry an* Leeby 
an* Joey when he was livin’. I’ve got a lot mair 
than my deserts.” 

“ We’ll juist look to meetin* next year again, 
mother. To think o* that keeps me up a* the 
winter.” 

“ Ay, if it’s the Lord’s will, Jamie, but am gey 
dune noo, an* Hendry’s fell worn too.” 

Jamie, the boy that he was, said, “ Dinna speak 
like that, mother,” and Jess again put her hand on 
his head. 

•Fine I ken, Jamie,” she said, "*at all my days 


THE LAST NIGHT 


195 


on this earth, be they short or lang, I’ve you for a 
staff to lean on.” 

Ah, many years have gone since then, but if 
Jamie be living now he has still those words to 
swallow. 

By and by Leeby went ben for the Bible, and 
put it into Hendry’s hands. He slowly turned 
over the leaves to his favourite chapter, the four- 
teenth of John’s Gospel. Always, on eventful 
occasions, did Hendry turn to the fourteenth of 
John. 

“ Let not your heart be troubled ; ye believe in 
God, believe also in Me. 

“ In My Father’s house are many mansions ; if 
it were not so I would have told you. I go to 
prepare a place for you.” 

As Hendry raised his voice to read there was a 
great stillness in the kitchen. I do not know that 
I have been able to show in the most imperfect 
way what kind of man Hendry was. He was 
dense in many things, and the cleverness that was 
Jess’s had been denied to him. He had less book- 
learning than most of those with whom he passed 
his days, and he had little skill in talk. I have 


196 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


not known a man more easily taken in by persons 
whose speech had two faces. But a more simple, 
modest, upright man, therenever was in Thrums, 
and I shall always revere his memory. 

“ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will 
come again, and receive you unto Myself; that 
where I am, there ye may be also.” 

The voice may have been monotonous. I have 
alwasy thought that Hendry’s reading of the Bible 
was the most solemn and impressive I have ever 
heard. He exulted in the fourteenth of John, 
pouring it forth like one whom it intoxicated while 
he read. He emphasized every other word ; it 
was so real and grand to him. 

We went upon our knees while Hendry prayed, 
all but Jess, who could not. Jamie buried his face 
in her lap. The words Hendry said were those he 
used every night. Some, perhaps, would have 
smiled at his prayer to God that we be not puffed 
up with riches nor with the things of this world. 
PI is head shook with emotion while he prayed, and 
he brought us very near to the throne of grace. 

“ Do thou, O our God,” he said, in conclusion, 

“ spread Thy guiding hand over him whom in Thy 


THE LAST NIGHT. 


197 


great mercy Thou hast brought to us again, and do 
Thou guard him through the perils which come 
unto those that go down to the sea in ships. Let 
not our hearts be troubled, neither let them be 
afraid, for this is not our abiding home, and may 
we all meet in Thy house, where there are many 
mansions, and where there will be no last night. 
Amen.” 

It was a silent kitchen after that, though the 
lamp burned long in Jess’s window. By its meagre 
light you may take a final glance at the little 
family ; you will never see them together again. 


CHAPTER XXL 


JESS LEFT ALONE. 

There may be a few who care to know how the 
lives of Jess and Hendry ended. Leeby died in 
the back-end of the year I have been speaking of, 
and as I was snowed up in the school-house at the 
time, I heard the news from Gavin Birse too late 
to attend her funeral. She got her death on the 
commonty one day of sudden rain, when she had 
run out to bring in her washing, for the terrible 
cold she woke with next morning carried her off 
very quickly. Leeby did not blame Jamie for 
not coming to her, nor did I, for I knew that 
even in the presence of death the poor must drag 
their chains. He never got Hendry’s letter with 
the news, and we know now that he was 
already in the hands of her who played the devil 


JESS LEFT ALONE. 199 

with his life. Before the spring came he had been 
lost to Jess. 

** Them *at has got sae mony blessin’s mair than 
the generality,” Hendry said to me one day, when 
Craigiebuckle had given me a lift into Thrums, 
“ has nae shame if they would pray aye for mair. 
The Lord has gi’en this hoose sae muckle, *at to 
pray for mair looks like no bein’ thankfu’ for what 
we’ve got Ay, but I canna help prayin’ to Him 
’at in His great mercy he’ll tak Jess afore me. 
Noo ’at Leeby’s gone, an’ Jamie never lets us 
hear frae him, I canna gulp doon the thocht o’ 
Jess bein’ left alane.” 

This was a prayer that Hendry may be par- 
doned for having so often in his heart, though God 
did not think fit to grant it. In Thrums, when a 
weaver died, his womenfolk had to take his seat at 
the loom, and those who, by reason of infirmities, 
could not do so, went to a place, the name of 
which, I thank God, I am not compelled to write 
in this chapter. I could not, even at this day, 
have told any episodes in the life of Jess had it 
ended in the poorhouse. 

Hendry would probably have recovered from 


200 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


the fever had not this terrible dread darkened his 
intellect when he was still prostrate. He was 
lying in the kitchen when I saw him last in life, 
and his parting words must be sadder to the 
reader than they were to me. 

“ Ay, richt ye are,” he said, in a voice that had 
become a child’s ; “ I hae muckle, muckle, to be 
thankfu’ for, an’ no the least is ’at baith me an’ 
Jess has aye belonged to a bural society. We hae 
nae cause to be anxious aboot a’ thing bein’ dune 
respectable aince we’re gone. It was Jess ’at 
insisted on oor joinin’ : a’ the wisest things I ever 
did I was put up to by her.” 

I parted from Hendry, cheered by the doctor’s 
report, but the old weaver Ndied a few days after- 
wards. His end was mournful, yet I can recall it 
now as the not unworthy close of a good man’s 
life. One night poor worn Jess had been helped 
ben into the room, Tibbie Birse having under- 
taken to sit up with Hendry. Jess slept for the 
first time for many days, and as the night was 
dying Tibbie fell asleep too. Hendry had been 
better than usual, lying quietly, Tibbie said, and 
the fever was gone. About three o’clock Tibbie 


JESS LEFT ALONE, 


201 


woke and rose to mend the fire. Then she saw 
that Hendry was not in his bed. 

Tibbie went ben the house in her stocking-soles, 
but Jess heard her. 

“What is’t, Tibbie?” she asked, anxiously. 

“ Ou, it’s no naething,” Tibbie said, “ he’s lyin’ 
rale quiet.” 

Then she went up to the attic Hendry was 
not in the house. 

She opened the door gently and stole out 
It was not snowing, but there had been a heavy 
fall two days before, and the night was windy. A 
tearing gale had blown fhe upper part of the brae 
clear, and from T’nowhead’s fields the snow was 
rising like smoke. Tibbie ran to the farm and 
woke up T’nowhead. 

For an hour they looked in v^ain for Hendry. 
At last some one asked who was working in 
Elshioner’s shop all night. This was the long 
earthen - floored room in which Hendry’s loom 
stood with three others. 

“ It’ll be Sanders Whamond likely,” T’nowhead 
said, and the other men nodded. 

But it happened that T’rowhead’s Bell, who had 


202 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


flung on a wrapper, and hastened across to sit 
with Jess, heard of the light in Elshioner’s shop. 

“It’s Hendry,” she cried, and then every one 
moved toward the workshop. 

The light at the diminutive, yarn-covered 
window was pale and dim, but Bell, who was at 
the house first, could make the most of a 
cruizey’s glimmer. 

“It’s him,” she said, and then, with swelling 
throat, she ran back to Jess. 

The door of the workshop was wide open, held 
against the wall by the wind. T’nowhead and the 
others went in. The cruizey stood on the little 
window. Hendry’s back was to the door, and he 
was leaning forward on the silent loom. He had 
been dead for some time, but his fellow-workers 
saw that he must have weaved for nearly an 
hour. 

So it came about that for the last few months 
of her pilgrimage Jess was left alone. Yet I may 
not say that she was alone. Jamie, who should 
have been with her, was undergoing his own 
ordeal far away ; where, we did not now even 
know. But though the poorhouse stands in 


/ESS LEFT ALONE, 


203 


Thrums, where all may see it, the neighbours 
did not think only of themselves. 

Than Tammas Haggart there can scarcely have 
been a poorer man, but Tammas was the first to 
come forward with offer of help. To the day of 
Jess’s death he did not once fail to carry her water 
to her in the morning, and the luxuriously living 
men of Thrums in those present days of pumps 
at every corner, can hardly realize what that 
meant Often there were lines of people at the 
well by three o’clock in the morning, and each had 
to wait his turn. Tammas filled his own pitcher 
and pan, and then had to take his place at the 
end of the line with Jess’s pitcher and pan, to 
wait his turn again. His own house was in the 
Tenements, far from the brae in winter time, but he 
always said to Jess it was "naething ava.” 

Every Saturday old Robbie Angus sent a bag 
of sticks and shavings from the saw-mill by his 
little son Rob, who was afterwards to become a 
man for speaking about at nights. Of all the 
friends that Jess and Hendry had, T’nowhead was 
the ablest to help, and the sweetest memory I 
have of the farmer and his wife is the delicate 


204 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


way they offered it. You who read will see Jess 
wince at the offer of charity. But the poor have 
fine feelings beneath the grime, as you will discover 
if you care to look for them, and when Jess said 
she would bake if any one would buy, you would 
wonder to hear how many kindly folk came to her 
door for scones. 

She had the house to herself at nights, but 
Tibbie Birse was with her early in the morning, 
and other neighbours dropped in. Not for long 
did she have to wait the summons to the better 
home. 

“Na,” she said to the minister, who has told me 
that he was a better man from knowing her, ** my 
thochts is no nane set on the vanities o’ the world 
noo. I kenna hoo I could ever hae haen sic an 
ambeetion to hae thae stuff-bottomed chairs.” 

I have tried to keep away from Jamie, whom 
the neighbours sometimes upbraided in her pre- 
sence. It is of him you who read would like to 
hear, and I cannot pretend that Jess did not sit at 
her window looking for him. 

‘‘Even when she was bakin’,” Tibbie told me, 
“ she aye had an eye on the brae. If Jamie had 


/£SS LEFT ALONE. 


205 


come at ony time when it was licht she w^ould 
hae seen 'im as sune as he turned the corner.” 

“If he ever comes back, the*sacket (rascal),” 
T’nowhead said to Jess, “ we’ll show ’im the door 
gey quick.” 

Jess just looked, and all the women knew how 
she would take Jamie to her arm& 

We did not know of the London woman then, 
and Jess never knew of her. Jamie’s mother 
never for an hour allowed that he had become 
anything but the loving laddie of his youth. 

“ I ken ’im ower weel,” she always said, “ my 
ain Jamie.” 

Toward the end she was sure he was dead. 1 
do not know when she first made up her mind 
to this, nor whether it was not merely a phrase 
for those who wanted to discuss him with her. 
I know that she still sat at the window looking 
at the elbow of the brae. 

The minister was with her when she died. 
She was in her chair, and he asked her, as was 
his custom, if there was any particular chapter 
which she would like him to read. Since her 
husband’s death she had always asked for the 


2o6 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


fourteenth of John, “Hendry*s chapter,” as it 
is still called among a very few old people in 
Thrums. This tihie she asked him to read the 
sixteenth chapter of Genesis. 

"When I came to the thirteenth verse,” the 
minister told me, "‘And she called the name of 
the Lord that spake unto her. Thou God seest me,’ 
she covered her face with her two hands, and said, 
‘Joey’s text, Joey’s text# Oh, but I grudged ye 
sair, Joey.* ** 

"I shut the book,” the minister said, “when 
I came to the end of the chapter, and then I 
saw that she was dead. It is my belief that her 
heart broke one-and-twenty years ago.” 


CHAPTER XXIL 


JAMIE’S HOME-COMING. 

On a summer day, when the sun was in the 
weavers’ workshops, and bairns hopped solemnly 
at the game of palaulays, or gaily shook their 
bottles of sugarelly water into a froth, Jamie came 
back. The first man to see him was Hookey 
Crewe, the post, 

“When he came frae London,” Hookey said 
afterwards at T’nowhead’s pig-sty, “Jamie used to 
wait for me at Zoar, i’ the north end o’ Tilliedrum. 
He carried his box ower the market muir, an’ sat 
on’t at Zoar, waitin’ for me to catch ’im up. Ay, 
the day afore yesterday me an* the powny was 
clatterin’ by Zoar, when there was Jamie standin’ 
in his identical place. He hadna nae box to sit 
upon, an’ he was far frae bein’ weel in order, but 


2o8 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


I kent ’im at aince, an’ I saw ’at he was waitin’ for 
me. So I drew up, an’ waved my hand to ’im.” 

" I would hae drove straucht by *im,” said 
T’nowhead ; " them ’at leaves their auld mother to 
want doesna deserve a lift” 

“ Ay, ye say that sittin’ there,” Hookey said ; 
“ but, lads, I saw his face, an’ as sure as death it 
was sic an’ awfu’ meeserable face ’at I couldna but 
pu’ the powny up. Weel, he stood for the space 
o’ a meenute lookin’ straucht at me, as if he would 
like to come forrit but dauredna, an’ syne he 
turned an’ strided awa ower the muir like a huntit 
thing. I sat still i’ the cart, an’ when he was far 
awa he stoppit an’ lookit again, but a’ my cryin’ 
wouldna bring him a step back, an’ i’ the end 
I drove on. I’ve thocht since syne ’at he didna 
ken whether his fowk was livin’ or deid, an’ was 
fleid to speir.” 

" He didna ken,” said T’nowhead, “ but the faut 
was his ain. It’s ower late to be taen up aboot 
Jess noo.” 

“ Ay, ay, T’nowhead,” said Hookey, “ it’s aisy 
to you to speak like that. Ye didna see his 
lace.” 


JAMIES HOME-COMING. 


209 


It is believed that Jamie walked from Tillie- 
drum, though no one is known to have met him 
on the road. Some two hours after the post left 
him he was seen by old Rob Angus at the saw- 
mill. 

** I was sawin* awa wi* a’ my micht,” Rob said, 
“ an’ little Rob was haudin’ the booards, for they 
were silly but things, when something made me 
look at the window. It could n a hae been a tap 
on’t, for the birds has used me to that, an’ it would 
hardly be a shadow, for little Rob didna look up. 
Whatever it was I stoppit i* the middle o’ a 
booard, an’ lookit up, an’ there I saw Jamie 
McQumpha. He joukit back when our een met, 
but I saw him weel ; ay, it’s a queer thing to say, 
but he had the face o’ a man ’at had come straucht 
frae hell.” 

“ I stood starin’ at the window,” Angus con- 
tinued, “ after he’d gone, an’ Robbie cried oot to 
ken what was the maiter wi’ me. Ay, that brocht 
me back to mysel, an’ I hurried oot to look for 
Jamie, but he wasna to be seen. That face gae 
me a turn.” 

From the saw-mill to the house at the top of 

15 


210 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS, 


the brae, some may remember, the road is up the 
commonty. I do not think any one saw Jamie on 
the commonty, though there were those to say they 
met him. 

“ He gae me sic a look,” a woman said, " ’at I 
was fleid an’ ran hame,” but she did not tell the 
story until Jamie’s home-coming had become a 
legend. 

There were many women hanging out their 
washing on the commonty that day, and none 
of them saw him. I think Jamie must have 
approached his old home by the fields, and pro- 
bably he held back until gloaming. 

The young woman who was now mistress of the 
house at the top of the brae both saw and spoke 
with Jamie. 

“Twa or three times,” she said, “I had seen a 
man walk quick up the brae an’ by the door. It 
was gettin’ dark, but I noticed ’at he was short an’ 
thin, an’ I would hae said he wasna nane weel if 
it hadna been ’at he gaed by at sic a steek. He 
didna look our wy — at least no when he was close 
up, an’ I set ’im doon for some ga’en aboot body 
Na, I saw naething aboot ’im to be fleid at.* 


JAMIE'S HOME-COMING. 


211 


“ The aucht o’clock bell was ringin’ when I saw 
’im to speak to. My twa-year-auld bairn was 
standin’ aboot the door, an* I was makkin’ some 
porridge for my man’s supper when I heard the 
bairny skirlin’. She came runnin* in to the hoose 
an’ hung i’ my wrapper, an’ she was hingin’ there, 
when I gaed to the door to see what was 
wrang. 

“It was the man I’d seen passin’ the hoose. 
He was standin’ at the gate, which, as a’body 
kens, is but sax steps frae the hoose, an’ I 
wondered at ’im neither runnin’ awa nor cornin’ 
forrit. I speired at ’im what he meant by 
terrifyin’ a bairn, but he didna say naething. He 
juist stood. It was ower dark to see his face 
richt, an’ I wasna nane taen aback yet, no till he 
spoke. Oh, but he had a fearsome word when 
he did speak. It was a kind o’ like a man 
hoarse wi’ a cauld, an’ yet no that either.” 

“ Wha bides i’ this hoose ? ” he said, ay standin’ 
there. 

“ It’s Davit Patullo’s hoose,” I said, “ an’ am the 
wife.” 

“ Whaur’s Hendry McQumpha > ” he speired. 


212 


A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 


“ He’s deid,” I said. 

He stood still for a fell while. 

“An’ his wife, Jess ?” he said. 

“ She’s deid, too,” I said. 

I thocht he gae a groan, but it may hae been 
the gate. 

“ There was a dochter, Leeby ? ” he said. 

“ Ay,” I said, “ she was ta’cn first.” 

“ I saw ’im put up his hands to his face, an’ he 
cried oot, ‘ Leeby too 1 ’ an’ syne he kind o’ fell 
agin the dyke. I never kent ’im nor nane o’ his 
fowk, but I had heard aboot them, an’ I saw ’at it 
would be the son frae London. It wasna for me 
to judge ’im, an’ I said to ’im would he no come 
in by an’ tak a rest. I was nearer ’im by that 
time, an’ it’s an awfu’ haver to say ’at he had a 
face to frichten fowk. It was a rale guid face, but 
no ava what a body would like to see on a young 
man. I felt mair like greetin’ mysel when I saw 
his face than drawin’ awa frae ’im. 

“ But he wouldna come in. ‘ Rest,’ he said, like 
ane speakin’ to ’imsel, * na, there’s nae mair rest 
for me.* I didna weel ken what mairTo say to ’im, 
for he aye stood on, an’ I wasna even sure ’at he 


JAMIE'S HOME-COMING, 


213 


saw me. He raised his heid when he heard me 
tellin’ the bairn no to tear my wrapper. 

“‘Dinna set yer heart ower muckle on that 
bairn,’ he cried oot, sharp like. ‘I was aince like 
her, an’ I used to hing aboot my mother, too, in 
that very roady. Ay, I thocht I was fond o’ her, 
an’ she thocht it too. Tak’ a care, wuman, ’at that 
bairn doesna grow up to murder ye.’ 

“He gae a lauch when he saw me tak baud o’ 
the bairn, an’ syne a’ at aince he gaed awa quick. 
But he wasna far doon the brae when he turned 
an’ came back. 

“‘Ye’ll, mebbe, tell me,’ he said, richt low, ‘if 
ye hae the furniture ’at used to be my rqother’s } ’ 

“‘Na,’ I said, ‘it was roupit, an’ I kenna 
whaur the things gaed, for me an’ my man comes 
frae Tilliedrum.’ 

“‘Ye wouldna hae heard,’ he said, ‘ wha got 
the muckle airm-chair ’at used to sit i’ the 
kitchen i’ the window ’at looks ower the brae ? ’ 

“ ‘ I could na be sure,’ I said, ‘ but there was an 
airm-chair at gaed to Tibbie Birse. If it was the 
ane ye mean, it a’ gaed to bits, an’ I think they 
burned it. It was gey dune.’ 


214 A WINDOW IN THRUMS. 

“*Ay/ he said, ‘it was gey dune/ 

“‘There was the chairs ben i* the room/ he 
said, after a while. 

“ I said I thocht Sanders Elshioner had got them 
at a bargain because twa o’ them was mended wi’ 
glue, an’ gey silly. 

“ ‘ Ay, that’s them,’ he said, ‘ they were richt 
neat mended. It was my mother ’at glued them. 
I mind o’ her makkin’ the glue, an’ warnin’ me an’ 
my father no to sit on them. There was the 
clock too, an’ the stool ’at my mother got oot an’ 
into her bed wi’, an’ the basket ’at Leeby carried 
when she gaed the errands. The straw was aff the 
handle, an’ my father mended it wi’ strings.’ 

“‘I dinna ken,’ I said, ‘whaur nane o’ thae 
gaed ; but did yer mother hae a staff? * 

“ ‘ A little staff,’ he said ; ‘ it was near black wi* 
age. She couldna gang frae the bed to her chair 
withoot it. It was broadened oot at the foot wi’ 
her leanin’ on’t sae muckle.’ 

“ ‘ I’ve heard tell,’ I said, ‘ ’at the dominie up i’ 
Glen Quharity took awa the staff.’ 

“ He didna speir for nae other thing. He had 
the gate in his hand, but I dinna think he kent ’at 


JAMIES HOME-COMING. 215 

he was swlngin’t back an’ forrit. At last he let it 
go. 

" ‘That’s aV he said, * I maun awa. Good-nicht, 
an’ thank ye kindly.’ 

“ I watched ’im till he gaed oot o* sicht. He 
gaed doon the brae.” 

We learnt afterwards from the gravedigger that 
some one spent great part of that night in the 
graveyard, and we believe it to have been Jamie. 
He walked up the glen to the school-house next 
forenoon, and I went out to meet him when I saw 
him coming down the path. 

“ * Ay,’ he said, ‘ it’s me come back.' 

I wanted to take him into the house and speak 
with him of his mother, but he would not cross 
the threshold. 

“ * I came oot,* he said, * to see if ye would gie 
me her staff — no ’at I deserve *t.’ 

" I brought out the staff and handed it to him, 
thinking that he and I would soon meet again. 
As he took it I saw that his eyes were sunk back 
into his head. Two great tears hung on his eye- 
lids, and his mouth closed in agony. He stared at 
me till the tears fell upon his cheeks, and then he 
went away. 


2I6 


A m ADO IV IN THRUMS. 


“That evening he was seen by many persons 
crossing the square. He went up the brae to his 
old home, and asked leave to go through the house 
for the last time. First he climbed up into the 
attic, and stood looking in, his feet still on the 
stair. Then he came down and stood at the door 
of the room, but he went into the kitchen. 

“‘I’ll ask one last favour o’ ye,’ he said to the 
woman : ‘ I would like ye to leave me here alane for 
juist a little while.* 

“ * I gaed oot,* the woman said, * meanin* to 
leave ’im to ’imsel’, but my bairn would n a come, 
an* he said, “ Never mind her,” so I left her wi’ ’im, 
an* closed the door. He was in a lang time, but 
I never kent what he did, for the bairn juist aye 
greets when I speir at her. 

“ I watched ’im frae the corner window gang 
doon the brae till he came to the corner. I thocht 
he turned round there an’ stood lookin’ at the 
hoose. He would see me better than I saw him 
for my lamp was i’ the window, whaur I’ve heard 
tell his mother keepit her cruizey. When my 
man came in I speired at *im if he’d seen ony- 
body standin’ at the corner o’ the brae, an* he 


JAMIE'S HOME-COMING, 


217 


said he thocht he’d seen somebody wi’ a little 
staff in his hand. Davit gaed doon to see if he 
was aye there after supper-time, but he was gone.” 
Jamie was never again seen in Thrums. 


THE END. 



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— New York Mail and Express. 


For Sale by all BooTcsellers, 

CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

104 & 106 Fourth Avenue, New York. 


55 


THE BOOK OF 



A COLLECTION OF STORIES 


By PIERRE LOTI. 

Translated from the French by T. P. O’Connor, M. P., author 
of “ Parnell and the Irish Movement,” etc., etc. i vol., 
i2mo. Cloth, 75 cts.; Paper, 50 cts. 


Everyone who admires literary style, everyone who 
enjoys good stories, will read with delight this volume 
of pathetic and touching tales. 

“ There is remarkable power in the book, and it is distinguished 
by an originality that is equally refreshing and interesting.” — Boston 
Saturday Evening Gazette. 

“ Charming as well as pathetic.” — Hartford Times. 

“Told with simple truth and earnestness.” — Arthur's Home 
Magazine. 

“ Will touch many hearts by its tenderness and insight.” — Boston 
Beacon. 

“ M. Loti gives a charm to the homeliest subject. It is not of 
what he writes, but the manner in which he writes that the reader 
thinks.” — Denver Times. 

“Along with their art and warmth of feeling, the poetry and 
picturesqueness of style, w'hich have made this writer famous, are 
amply in evidence.” — Hartford Courant. 


For Sale by all Booksellers. 


CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

104 & 106 Fourth Avenue, New York. 


57 




ROSE AND NINETTE 

A Story of tlie Morals and Manners of tlie Day. 

By ALPHONSE DAUDET. 

Translated by Mary J. Serrano, i vol., i2mo, 
Cloth, 75 cts.; Paper, 50 cts. 


M. Daudet regards this story as the supreme effort of 
his life. It deals with the subject of divorce, and is 
written with a power that indicates the author’s deep 
feeling on this leading social problem. Simple in plot, 
free from any hint of the vulgarly sensational, every 
page glows with the touch of the true literary artist. 

. “ A very strong and brilliant picture. . . . Treated with the light 
and sure hand of M. Daudet.” — Literary World. 

“ An entertaining study.” — Hartford Times, 

** A marvel of artistic construction.” — San Francisco Wave. ^ - 

" Wonderfully strong.” — Boston Times. 

“ Daudet’s diction is always exquisite, and this charm is not lost 
in the adept translation of the present novel.” — Des Moines Mail 
and Times. 

“ A strong piece of work.” — Brooklyn Times. 

“ A fine example of the author’s talent.” — Philadelphia Item. 

** Entertaining.” — Detroit Journal. 


For Sale hy all Booksellers, 


CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

104 & 106 Fourth Avenue, New York. 


»' V4t. I 

THE CHARMING AND POPULAR 

WORKS OF MRS. L. T. MEADE. 



Very few authors have achieved a popularity equal to that of 
Mrs. Meade as a w I'ter of stories for young people. Her characters 
are living beings of flesh and blood, not lay figures of conventional 
type. Into the trials, crosses, in short the everyday experiences of 
these, the reader enters at once with zest ancj 'hearty sympathy. 
While Mrs. Meade always writes with a high moral purpose, her les- 
sons of love, purity, and nobility of character are rather inculcated 
by example than intruded as sermons. 


A SWEET GIRL GRADUATE. i vol., i2mo, extra 
cloth, with illustrations, $1.50. 

A WORLD OF GIRLS. Illustrated, i vol., i2w.j, ^xtra 
c]c'’h, go! and colored inks, $1.50. 

POLLY: A NEW-FASHIONED GIRL. With full-page 
lluslranons, i vol., i2nio, cloth, gilt, $1.50. 

THE PALACE BEAUTIFUL. A Story for Girls, 
h eight full-page plates, i vol., i2mo, cloth, $1.50. 

THE CHILDREN OF WILTON CHASE. i vol., 
extra cloth, with illustrations, $1.50. 

FOUR ON AN ISLAND. A Book for the Little Folks. 

ol.. i2rno, extra cloth, with illustrations, $1.50. 

A RING OF RUBIES. i vol., i2mo, extra cloth, with 
isir:»tior.s, $1.50. 

CAfSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

104 &: 106 Fourth Ave., New York. 


59 



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